Illusion
by Inks Inc
Summary: "Do you believe in love ever after?"
1. Chapter 1

Do you believe in love ever after?

I did. I believed in the kind of love that people script screenplays about. I believed in the kind of love that people live and die for. I believed in the kind of glance-across-the-bridge love that songs are written about. But that's all over with now. That belief, I don't have it anymore. I haven't had it for the longest time. There are moments when I miss it. Long for the warm comfort it provides. But then I remind myself that it is always better to be burned with the truth, than comforted with a lie. And that's what love ever after is.

A lie.

Because he was my love ever after. He was my fairy-tale. Like Aladdin, he went from rags to riches, to burst into my life like Prince Ali on his magic carpet. But Aladdin had secrets, didn't he? He didn't _tell_ Princess Jasmine that he was a street urchin with a monkey-devil on his shoulder. And if you can't even trust animated men not to hurt you, what business do you have trusting the real deal? See, I should have known better. Much better. Because, regardless of what she has that I don't, I am at least, intelligent. I'm not a formulaic damsel in distress with great hair, but only two brain cells. I could and should have seen the signs.

Because there _were_ signs.

There always is.

Bubbles are a dangerous thing. You can live in them and the world outside you, with all its clues and evidence, will pass you by with a watery wave. I was in our bubble. I was busy believing in love ever after while he was out screwing blonde ever leggier. Yes, yes, you read that right. _Blonde._ He's switched it up. Brunettes don't do it for him anymore, at least, _this_ brunette doesn't. He's gone older, blonder, and prettier. At thirty-three, Autumn (I thought it was her working girl name at first, if you catch my drift) Spector has ten more years of experience on this Earth than I do. She has a slimmer waist than I do, bigger eyes than I do and the man that I used to do.

And you know what's worse?

I was the one who introduced them to each other.

Cliché upon cliché, right?

It was me. In the foyer. With an appointment book.

I thought it would be a nice surprise. A present for the man who has everything. An early birthday gift that was supposed to be steeped in thought and love. But it didn't really work out that way. You see, Escala caught fire about seven months before Autumn came into our lives. Christian's eye in the sky caught fire quicker and hotter than a Christmas tree doused in petrol. He was devastated. He pretended he wasn't, like it didn't even matter. Which, monetarily, it didn't. But it did matter, it mattered personally. It was his first multi-million-dollar property purchase, bought in celebration of taking GEH public.

And when the fire was finished with it, only smouldering piles of wood remained.

Autumn, talented and beautiful bitch that she is, specialises in the fine art of piano restoration. The grand piano that died in Escala, was a present from Grace and Carrick for their son's achievements on the first anniversary of GEH. He loved that piano. So, I had it restored. Autumn had at first, been reluctant, the ruins of the piano were a hot mess. But I was adamant. My musical Fifty would love it and therefore, he had to have it.

It took three months and thousands and thousands of dollars.

Before, three days before his thirtieth birthday, it was finally ready.

Autumn had to be there at the grand reveal. That didn't bother me, I had no reason for it to bother me, she hadn't even met my philandering Fifty back then. I was so wrapped up in my excitement that I couldn't have cared less who had to be there to tune the beautifully restored black beauty back to his personal perfection. But I should have cared, oh, how I should have cared. My eyes were for him only when he stepped into our new home and saw his pride and joy of musicality in the foyer. His shock had been my joy and his face-splitting grin had been my soul-splintering happiness.

I didn't see the look in her eyes when she saw the look in his.

I didn't see her lick her lips like a preying lioness as she drank him in.

Every little bit of him.

Ever the polite wallflower, I had introduced them. Watched her shake his hand for just a little too long to be professional, flutter her eyelashes just a little too hard to be a blink. And still, I thought nothing of it. Women threw themselves at his feet on the daily and he side-stepped them like vomit on the sidewalk. He never spared even the prettiest of pretty girls a second glance. All for one very simple reason.

For love ever after.

I was his beginning, middle and end. He told me so. Over and over again, he told me so. And as destiny sniggered behind her hands, I started to believe him. Thought to myself, _hey girl_ , you deserve a happily ever after just as much as that platypus Aimee McCann from high school, with her 32DD's, one brain cell, and Hollywood smile. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth. If by some stroke of God, Christian Trevelyan-Grey wants you, don't rock the boat. Don't fall into the ocean of otherwise certain spinsterhood. Embrace that shit. Think about taking up religion and thanking a higher power for that shit.

Don't lose that shit.

But I did. I lost that shit and let me tell you how. I started believing in things I had no business believing in. I started trusting in the fealty of a man who attracted the lust of every woman, and his fair share of men, he met. I began to treat it like one treats their other half's excessive chest hair. Annoying, sure, but nothing to get one's knickers in a twist about. In fact, it caused me some amusement at times, to see him batting off simpering idiot after salivating halfwit, making his way back to me.

And only me.

Autumn Spector put a swift end to that.

She was everything I wasn't. Beautiful, holder of an Ivy league education, musically talented beyond belief and a business owner with a staff number higher than my years on Earth. She was exactly the kind of woman Christian would be expected to have on his arm. And she wanted his arm, regardless of the fact that I was still attached to it. It started off small, innocuous. She called to check on how the piano was performing, a routine follow-up she said. The disappointment when I answered the phone instead of Christian was well hidden, I didn't catch it. The second time she called, and got me instead of him, her disappointment was evident.

And I still didn't catch it.

Next time, she called him at work.

The minute she got passed Andrea, her elevated talent of manipulation sealed my fate.

No one sidestepped the Andrea Parker line of defence to Christian Grey without serious skills.

He told me about her call when he got home that night. That was the first and final conversation of truth we ever had about Autumn Spector. He was impressed with her professionalism, her consumer satisfaction strategy. He was in love with his restored piano. Played it every night. Thanked me in many different ways, at many different times of the day and night. I was grateful to her for his happiness, indebted to her for her enabling me to give him something incredible for once. Can you believe that? I was grateful to the scheming, gold-digging strumpet that was hatching her plan to steal my man from under my nose the moment she laid eyes on him.

In our home.

She took her time. She did her research and her reach was far more than that of piano restorers ever ought to have been. She was connected and flitted in the same circles that he did. Turns out, musical miracles were her forte, but they weren't her primary business focus. She was the female Christian. But in a much quieter, silent partner sort of way. She sacrificed public admiration for privacy and anonymity. She had stakes in telecommunications and green energy, not quite on a GEH scale, but enough to get her into the glitziest of Washington dinners.

She intertwined her business with his.

Cleverly, discreetly, patiently.

You know, in a way, I can almost understand it. Who wouldn't do whatever it takes to salve the Christian Grey bite? I mean, I was held hostage by a crazed ex-sub at gunpoint and I still would have given more, done more, for Christian Grey. Redirecting the flow of business to fall into the lap of GEH seems an almost tame effort in comparison to all the things I did to live in his life.

And still, he chose her.

I was feeling sick the night it happened. Not violently sick by any stretch, but sick enough that I didn't want to go to yet another dry ass dinner. Things weren't that good between us around then and a night apart was, as a rarity, appealing. We'd been fighting. All the damned time. His controlling and possessive streaks were out of control because there'd been a spate of violent attacks against women in the city. He tried to stop me going to work, insisted Taylor watch my every move, went thermonuclear when I slipped away for a much-needed night out with Kate.

I think he was as secretly happy to have a night away from me as I was from him.

He certainly didn't try and change my mind.

If I could change anything in my life, I would go back and change it for me.

It was that night that she cast her first move.

Or so she told me.

Oh yeah, she _told_ me. Everything. In excruciating detail, a play-by-play narrative that conjured up some of the most vivid imagery my literary mind had ever experienced. Their four-month affair had flourished without a nugget of my knowledge before she had dropped the bomb she had been creating since the day she'd finetuned his piano strings. She'd been wearing a Valentino gown. Black, subtly glitzy, and off the shoulder. She'd spotted the opportunity she hadn't been expecting when he walked stiffly into the dining room, with no one on his arm and no one seated at his side. She'd been expecting me. That dinner was just to evaluate how we were together, how we played off each other in public. It was a surveillance operation. Until I gave her the ammunition to speed up her game plan astronomically, because I had a cramp and a bad dose of the sulks.

I handed him to her on a silver platter.

I really did.

She pretended someone had taken her seat at her table. She feigned consternation as she glided past his table and paused in faux amazement when she spied him. He looked up at just the right time and she perfected her damsel in distress routine to a fine art. Asking him about his piano, she opened up about the _embarrassment_ of being table-less. And he, of course, the consummate gentleman had promptly offered her a seat.

 _My seat._

She couldn't believe her luck. They got talking as the most boring awards ceremony known to man droned on around them. She intelligently guided the conversation to a place where she could drip feed him bits and pieces of her own portfolio. He had been pleasantly surprised to find their commonalities, impressed that she wasn't a one-trick, one-tune pony. She was a Harvard grad, and he a Harvard drop-out. They talked of their college days, their elite status, their business domination. She was in-tune with the stock market that made him vibrate with excitement and that bored me to tears. She made him laugh with inside jokes of the commercial world I was ignorant of, and he made her tinkle with amusement with his dry wit.

All the while, I was on my second tub of Ben and Jerry's and feeling sorry for myself.

By the time they'd finished dessert, they were in negotiations.

He thought they were brokering an investment, she knew she was getting his personal cell.

And that, she said sweetly, was that.

 _It's nothing personal, Anastasia. Surely you knew deep down that you weren't the woman for him? The Christian Greys of this world always end up with women like me. You'll find your man, honestly sweetie, you will. But it won't be this man. It won't be Christian. He's mine now. And you need to know that I will do whatever it takes to keep it that way…._

I thought it was a joke.

A very strange, perverse and almost Mrs Robinson style hoot-and-a-half.

I'd laughed.

In her face.

I'd actually _laughed._

But she didn't laugh back. She just looked at me with the kind of pity a vet offers a dying dog. I was in our home when she came to tell me the news. I was in our lounge, wondering what to make for our dinner, I was completely and utterly clueless. She said Christian couldn't bring himself to tell me from his own lips. She said that I could keep the house, he wouldn't come back and make things even more difficult than they already were between us. He would have someone come by and remove anything of his within a working week. There would be no need to see each other and experience all the pain that such a meeting would bring. That they never meant to hurt me, but they had fallen in love and couldn't bear to keep their adoration in the dark any longer.

I genuinely thought she was on drugs.

Or deranged.

Or drugged and deranged.

I had called him. And called and called, before calling and calling again.

He didn't pick up.

He _always_ picked up.

I e-mailed him. They bounced back. My address had been blocked. She just sat and watched with a sly smile on her rosy pink lips. I began to panic. I called Andrea, and she stonewalled me. Told me Christian was out to lunch. She was lying, I could tell. I called Grace, and she was edgy with me, hiding something, trying to get me off the phone. Same with Elliot and the same with Mia. I was being completely shut out. Then, you know, I thought I was just having a bad dream. Or that I'd eaten some really bad shellfish. Or maybe even drank three bottles of wine without really realizing it.

But it wasn't any of that.

It wasn't any of that at all.

Eventually, she left. In a hurry. People tended to do that when you launch yourself at them, nails out and fists flying. Looking back on that now, I regret it. I despise the fact that I lowered myself to her level. To _their_ level. An entire hour later, I'd eventually gotten him on the line by threatening Andrea I would barge into Grey House with a sawn-off shotgun if she didn't put him on the phone. And so, she did, with his reluctant permission.

 _"Anastasia."_

" _Christian? What the hell is going on? I've just had that piano tuning woman from months ago in the house and she was spouting the most insane-"_

 _"Anastasia. Please listen to me for a moment."_

 _"Listen to you? You don't even know what's been going on, I-"_

 _"Anastasia, the things Autumn told you aren't insane or untrue. They're true and I'm so sorry. I couldn't face you and tell you myself and see what I've done. To you, to us. I've been having an affair with Autumn since the Summer gala, the one you were too sick to come to. Things were… well, you know the way things were between us. I'm not making excuses. What I've done is the worst thing I have ever done in my life and I will never forgive myself. But I can't help the way I feel, Anastasia. I've tried and tried, but I can't. Autumn and I are together now, and I know it's out of nowhere and I know I've betrayed you, and I'm sorry. You can keep anything you want, have anything you want, I'll give you everything and anything that I can… except me."_

 _"… what? What are you talking… Christian, what the hell… What are you… "_

 _"I'm so sorry, Anastasia. I'm sorrier than you will ever know. There are some things that even I cannot control, and even though it will never seem it, your wellbeing was and is my priority. At whatever cost. There are some things that can never be understood, and for that no apology will ever be enough, trust that what we had was the best thing I've ever done. No matter what else you may think, please remember that."_

 _"Christian, I-"_

 _"Goodbye, Anastasia. We will not speak again. Please, look after yourself, always."_

And that was the last time we ever spoke.

Three months ago.

And ninety-two days later, I'm still as broken as I was on day one.

So, I'll ask you again, do you believe in love ever after?

The love story of Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey was supposed to be a happily ever after. It was supposed to buck the trend and give hope to all the mousey-haired bookworms out there, that they _could_ have their very own Prince Charming. Not the kind of Prince Charming that leaves Fiona the Ogre in her swamp when she turns green and mundane, but the kind of Prince Charming that lies down in her swap with her, staring at the stars.

But that's not the way our story ended.

He's out there, right now, and he's whispering sweet nothings in Autumn Spector's ear in the lap of luxury. I'm in a one-bed Seattle hellhole, because I'd rather be impoverished independently than mourn in decadence dependently. I threw away my dignity and tried and tried to contact him. All to no avail. His parents are respecting his wishes of _not_ giving me his new cell number, his siblings too. He is in the wind and I have to accept that what was meant to be, is over. I was never meant to have my happily ever after with Prince Charming.

He's with her, now.

With Autumn the slut Spector.

He's telling her all the things he told me. Maybe he has a Red Room of Pain wherever he's living now. Maybe she's a natural, unlike me. Maybe they bonded over that. Maybe they recognized needs in each other than I neither have nor can fulfil. Whatever they share, it's working. They're all over _Society Weekly_ like white on rice. Her on his arm at a fundraising dinner for at risk children. Her on his arm at a black-tie gala in aid of a new children's wing at the local hospital. Her on his arm at the annual chamber of commerce ball.

Every time, with a smile wider than the Persian Gulf on her face.

Every time, with a firmer grip on his arm.

Every time, he looked mouth wateringly and soul crushingly handsome.

They're in love.

So I'll ask you again, do you believe in love ever after?

Because if you do, you shouldn't. You should take heed. Take heed of the Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele love story of the ages. Note with detailed attention how it crashed and burned in the flames of deceit. He was my everything. My morning and night, light and life. He was my first and only love. He was my first, in all things, and my last. I can still taste him on my lips, feel him at my side and mourn for him in my head. But he's a cancer. Christian the Cancer. Because he smiles at you as he looks you in the eye, with a knife behind his back. He strokes your cheek and tells you that you're special, while he's bedding the help.

Because there is no such thing as love ever after.

So that's it, I suppose. That's me, Ana, in a nutshell. I loved and lost, and I never saw either coming. I never meant to fall in love with the devil. But I did, and I loved harder than hard. I did everything I could. I sacrificed my morals, my dignity and my entire concept of my being. All in the name of love, all in the name of blending two into one and jumping in with both feet. And it wasn't enough. It just… it wasn't enough.

Because there is no such thing as love ever after.

As I fall asleep, I wonder, as I always do… what is he doing now? Is he thinking of me the way I think of him? Or am I alone in my pathetic bubble of grief? Does he allow her to sleep in his bed? He said that was a _me only_ thing, but I thought his body was a _me only_ thing, too. And how wrong I was. How so very wrong and blind, for so very long, I was. There are no more tears. I've cried myself out, over and over again, I've cried myself out. I have no more saline to give. So it's just me, the two am silence and another night of wondering and wondering….

Will this pain ever end?

Will this pain ever end?

I cannot breathe with the disgusting scent of her in the air. She is not to be in my apartment, that much, I would not be moved on. She has never touched me and she is never _going_ to touch me, try to touch me, or think about trying to touch me. Unless there's a photographer within fifty feet. In which case, I have to suck it the fuck up and dissociate myself from the hell I'm living.

You know, it's weird.

I've spend my life living a lie.

The lie of the charming CEO by day and the deviant pervert at night.

I thought it was hard work keeping up that lie. I thought it took everything I had, that I couldn't possibly falsify another facet of my life. But adversity brings out the best and worst in people. And when that adversity comes in the form of danger speeding towards the one you love the most, you find it in yourself to falsify whatever the hell needs to be falsified. The last three months of my life have been that additional falsification.

But the thoughts of another three months makes my heart stop.

Her scent will remain in the town car until Taylor can have it disinfected in the morning. Well, technically it's morning now, but morning morning. Her slender frame is encased in a three-thousand-dollar dress, born out of my bank account and her smile is Dr Fenton's best and brightest. She crosses her legs and raises a perfectly manicured brow as the glass divider is dutifully risen. To the naked eye, she is exquisite.

To my eye, she is the most despicable of beasts.

"Christian," she purrs, "How are you darling?"

Jesus Christ I've never hit a woman (you know what I mean) before in my life but…

"What do you want, Autumn? I don't have all night."

She smiles that sly smile that I should have noticed from the get go and digs around her purse. Sliding a pink invite towards me, she laughs when I snap it out of her hand with ire. My heart sinks when I read the flouncy writing and for the one millionth time, I wish I could wake from this never-ending nightmare. It's a dinner dance in aid of the new Seattle Hospice. All the richest and stiffest will be there, accompanied by a barrage of paparazzi.

Pro forma.

My fist clenches the pretty pink invite into smithereens. This is the first time in my life where I couldn't wheedle or negotiate my way out of a situation. Even Taylor agrees that to try and out manoeuvre this insane motherfucking bitch would have catastrophic fallout. The kind that even my resources couldn't control or withstand. And the sole victim of that catastrophe wouldn't be me or my family, Taylor or Mrs Jones. I can't take that risk. Not now, anyway. Not when I'm in the weeds and she's the fucking lawnmower bearing down on me with fangs bared.

"For how long more do you plan on keeping this fucking farce going?"

She flicks her revolting blonde hair over her shoulder.

Smiling that inhuman and psychotic smile, she shrugs with the nonchalance of one holding all the cards.

"For as long as you want to keep protecting your beloved Anastasia, Mr Grey."

…..

TBC

….


	2. Chapter 2

"You're a straight-up representative of the devil, do you know that?"

I don't give a shit that I'm losing it, even though I swore that I'd never let this satanic bitch witness the losing of my cool. It's been three months. Three months without Anastasia, three months of her out in the world, alone, and believing the worst of the worst about me. And it's all because of this demonic, social-ladder-climbing whore of the night.

"Christian-"

"Don't you _dare_ use my first name, you fucking tramp. Mr Grey will suffice."

She smiles at me as though I'm a tantrum throwing toddler, that even through the screaming and kicking feet, is an adorable specimen. My palms twitch, and not in a good way, not in an Anastasia way. They jerk with the need to wrap themselves around this slut's neck and squeeze the fucking life right out of her. Taylor has had to talk me down from _that_ ledge more than once.

Can you blame me, in all honesty, can you?

What would _you_ do?

"Mr Grey," she corrects with that simpering voice that sends chills of disgust up my spine. "For a businessman, you really ought to have a thicker skin. You are free to fuck whomever you please, so long as the world keeps on believing that you're head over heels in love with _me._ It's not as if I am enforcing a sentence of celibacy upon you. Quite the opposite, as you know. I've offered you a side of my bed often enough."

I seethe and shudder with disgust.

"I'd rather coat my dick in pickle juice and shove it into the mouth of a viper."

She smirks.

"As you wish, Mr Grey, as you wish."

"Get out," I snap, suddenly weary as hell, "I'll pick you up for this bullshit dinner dance tomorrow at eight. Remember the deal, I don't want your devil's paw on any part of me unless there's a photographer in direct sight. I don't want you whispering in my ear or pretending to laugh at some non-existent joke. I want to get in and out with as little contact with the she-devil as possible. Do you understand?"

The sickly-sweet smile slips from her face.

It's replaced by the cold, calculating look I'm growing accustomed to.

"Easy tiger, you don't negotiate or renegotiate the terms of our arrangement. You have no leverage here, I'm holding all the cards. If I were you, I'd remember that before I opened my mouth. You know how we women can be: _ruled by our emotions._ You wouldn't want me to get upset with the way you speak to me and pay little Anastasia a visit, would you?"

My hands curl into fists.

"If you contact her again, I swear to God, I'll rip your fucking tongue out."

The simpering smile is back.

I wonder if I could buy my way out of a murder charge?

"No, you won't. You'll do whatever it takes to protect that simpleton of a girl, you'll even ruin your own life in the process, so you won't give me _cause_ to call. However bad she feels about the lie we fed her, imagine how she would choke on the truth. Just imagine her face when she finds out that the only reason you and she ever became an item in the first placewas because you were trying to-"

"Shut up. Shut your fucking mouth and get out. I will see you tomorrow and we can play out yet another evening of your sick little fantasy. Because you're right, Autumn, I will do whatever it takes for Anastasia. Even if it means that I lie awake at night thinking about all the different ways in which you could fall off a cliff, burn in a fiery inferno or drown in the deepest sea. But you mark my words, this isn't going to end the way you think it's going to end. No one pulls this shit over on me and walks away with the trophy. So, enjoy the fruits of your labor, because before you know it… they're going to shrivel to ash in your mouth and your world is going to burn to the ground around you. Now get the fuck out."

I was always taught that it was wrong to hit a woman… but with the advent of feminism… does that still stand? Is hitting a woman (and not in a good way) still as much of an egregious sin as it was twenty years ago? I guess it is. It more than likely is… but that doesn't take the urge away. That doesn't make me any less consumed by the desire to throttle thisheathen who destroyed my life as she clambers out of my town car in the middle of the night. I have hated many people throughout my time on this planet… but my animus for Autumn fucking Spector is something I have never known.

I would watch her writhe on the floor, alight with flame, and toast marshmallows over her crisping corpse.

She took Anastasia from me.

She took the best thing that ever happened to me, away.

There can be no coming back.

And no matter how long it takes, no matter how many more Scotch filled nights that reek of loneliness I have to suffer through… I _will_ bring this bitch down. I will do it legally or illegally, I will do it privately or publicly, I will do it in whatever manner causes the greatest degree of total destruction and devastation.

Because Ana will never forgive me.

And I will never forgive myself.

I was never meant to fall in love with her. I didn't even know I _could_ fall in love with her, or with anyone. But I did… I did it, and in doing so, I brought nothing but shit storm after shit storm into her life. But I justified it by telling myself we were happy, we were in love, and everything else was just… noise.

She's lingering at the door and I close my eyes in exhausted preparation.

"You should know that I am a firm believer in covering all my bases, Mr Grey. Insurance is something that I hold close to my heart, it helps me sleep at night. Our arrangement will come to an end when I have gleamed from it all that I require, and not before. When it's over, it's over. You can go crawling back to that silly little girl and beg for her forgiveness, tell her we were just a flash in the pan, feed her whatever bullshit you need to feed her to regain her affections. But I _will_ walk away from this with the trophy… because if I don't, my insurance will pay out. Actually, I think it's more assurance than insurance, and as you know… only two things in this life are certain."

Her devious laugh fills the air and my teeth grind together like a mortar and pestle.

"But my death will not put an end to your taxes, Mr Grey. Remember that."

The door slams and she's gone.

The air is clean once more.

I gulp it down and wonder for the millionth fucking time… how did I get here?

 _How did I get here?_

But more importantly…

 _Can I ever find my way back?_

Taylor's voice breaks through my inner storm.

"Back to Escala, Sir?"

Back to an empty, Anastasia-devoid hellhole?

Where else do I have to go?

"Yes, Taylor. Back to Escala, divider back up."

I wonder what she's doing now. I wonder what she's doing at a certain time, all the time. Is she eating? Is she sleeping? Against my most ingrained instinct, I haven't had any of my people on her. I have done her enough damage, without adding invasion of privacy to the list. So, I don't know… I don't know where she lives, who she lives with or what she does for a living. She's cut off any and all financial aid that I hoped against hope she wouldn't do. The house that we shared remains empty, meticulously kept upby my maintenance crew. I have not been back there, and I will never go back there. But I can't rent it or sell it, I can't do anything with it… it's like me… it's _stuck._

Can't go backwards, can't stay still, can't move forwards.

I've thought of everything I can think to think about.

And I can't come up with a way to fucking disarm her.

She has a gun to my head. Naturally, compliance is the instinctive reaction to having said gun to said head. But I don't _give_ compliance, I _demand_ compliance. At the very best, I can _feign_ compliance, but the façade is wearing thin and my ability to keep up with her sick fucking charade is wearing even thinner. There's no two ways about it, the only way to remove her leverage… is to take the plunge myself.

I would have to confess.

Everything.

I'd have to admit the real reason I went to that hardware store three years ago. I'd have to admit the real reason I wanted to bring her close. Of course, the burning attraction I felt and _feel_ for her was and is, real… Realer than real. But that wasn't my motivation… and I'd have to stand in front of her face, and tell her that the real drive behind my need to know everything there was to know about her… was to absolve my guilt.

I cannot do that.

For as much as she hates me now, it's nothing compared to how she'd feel if she knew the truth. Not a single day of our three years passed me by that I didn't think about telling her. But one look at her beautiful face, her wide and trusting eyes and the inner sanctity of her soul and I pussied out… _every single time._ That's one-thousand and ninety-five opportunities to tell her the truth that I didn't take. What kind of a fucking man does that make me?

I'll tell you what kind of a man it makes me.

It makes me not a man at all.

I'm not a big believer in fate or any such horseshit. But a series of events _had_ to play out in precise motion for the last three years to have taken place, starting with the illness that _had_ to intervene to strike down Katherine Kavanagh the day I met Anastasia Steele in her stead. Rightly or wrongly, I believe that she was always meant to cross my path so that I could pave the way to absolution. But I didn't pave that path, I paved another. I paved the path to ill-advised love that was secretly shrouded in secrecy itself.

I was going to propose to her the night that Autumn blitzed my life.

I had convinced myself that honesty wasn't always the best policy.

And then, once again, fate intervened.

And now the sins of the past are marring my future to the point that I don't even want to live the fucking thing. There's no way out, there's no way back. My only way out is to go to Anastasia, confess everything, and wait for the axe to fall. But I know I won't do that… and I know it on the basis of one simple and incontrovertible fact.

When you cheat on someone and you tell them about it…

You're not doing it to make _them_ feel better.

You're doing it to make _you_ feel better.

I didn't cheat on Anastasia, I never would, but the incontrovertible fact still fits.

And Anastasia will not be the one to suffer to salve my wounds.

I'll live a life of lies and lethargy before that happens.

Do you think that makes me a moral man?

Or do you think that makes me a coward?

Can one be both?

I don't think so.

The town car slides to a halt in the underground garage of Escala and I sit and stare at the expensively lined walls. I have to get outand ride that elevatorinto nothingness. In the morning, I have to get up and bark and order my way through another day of business domination and pretend that I still have my heart and head in the game… before bringing that succubus out in the public spotlight and allowing her claws to dig ever deeper into my arm and my life.

I close my eyes.

And breathe deeply.

I'm going to make you a promise… and as of now, my word is still worth something.

Anastasia may be lost to me forever, but revenge is not. Autumn Spector will be all over the upcoming newspapers as the one who snared the elusive Christian Grey. She will climb another rung on the social ladder she cares so much about. But she doesn't know what is coming down the line for her, she doesn't know the depths of my rage for her. I hate that woman more than I hated the Pimp and the Crack Whore put together. I hate that woman more than I hate world hunger, global warming and genocide.

My loathing of her is the incentive for my heart to continue pumping.

Because she has taken everything from me.

And I am going to take everything from her.

Somehow, someway, someday… Autumn Spector will rue the day she started this.

She will _rue_ the fucking day.

She will _never_ rue the fucking day.

I think that's the worst thing about it, the complete and utter lack of revenge. I mean, if you invest in something, if you put your all into saving for the most stunning product in the store… and it breaks… you get compensated, right? But there is no compensation when the love between you and Christian Grey breaks. There is no consumer watchdog, there is no _please retain your receipt for returns._

There is sweet fuck all.

There is no retribution, revenge or recompense.

There they are, yet again, on the front page of _Who's Who._ She is simply stunning in a strapless gown of faintest gold. The nails that belong to the hand snaked around his upper arm are painted in an exactly matching shade, as inright down the last fucking microparticle. Her blonde hair is swept up into an elegant chiffon and her hourglass figure looks like a playboy spread with a strange sophistication. He's in his trademark tux, the simple black and white combination highlighting his copper and tumbling hair, his smoky gray eyes and the defined frame of his torso.

I physically ache as I stare down at them over my untouched cornflakes.

Can you actually die from a broken heart?

Hold on.

Yes, yes you can.

Google says so.

It's literally called Broken Heart Syndrome.

" _Broken heart syndrome_ _is a temporary_ _heart_ _condition that's often brought on by stressful situations, such as the death or loss of a loved one. The condition can also be triggered by a serious physical illness or surgery. People with_ _broken heart syndrome_ _may have sudden chest pain or think they're having a_ _heart_ _attack."_

Christian Grey is literally going to be my cause of death. The only thing that _isn't_ right about Google's description is the _temporary_ bit. This is not a temporary pain, this is a… _you're going to feel this way until the day you float to the pearly gates,_ kind of pain. I feel like I'm having a heart attack, all day, every day. And every time I see her hand on his arm and his smile on her face, I die a little more inside. Why does she have to be so beautiful? Why does she have to have all the right curves, in all the right places? Why does she have to be so well-educated and so well-connected?

Why does she have to be everything that I am not?

This is _not_ the best way to prepare for a job interview.

Yes.

That's right.

I have a job interview.

I haven't worked in three months. Turns out, when you lose your shit and don't show up to the tentative editing job you only recently snared, they fire you. Who fucking knew? The day my pink slip arrived was also the first day that I saw the two of them wrapped around each other like poison ivy, for the whole world to see.

Needless to say, Tuesday's are now my least favorite day of the week.

But I have to pull myself together.

My mother didn't raise the kind of woman who doesn't get back up after she's been kicked down.

I can mourn and work at the same time.

The rent is due, the refrigerator is pretty bleak, and the utility bills are mounting. It's time to get my shit together and at least _try_ to start putting the pieces of my life back in order. I had a life before Christian Grey and chances are, I can have a life after Christian Grey. Not a life I want, not a life I crave, but a living and breathing kind of life nonetheless. I can survive, I can feed and clothe myself and get lost in the masses of directionless people just trying to get by.

Welcome to the real world, Ana.

I check my reflection in the mirror. I'm more than a few pounds lighter and I'm more than a few worry lines heavier. But all in all, I look pretty much the same. I look like every other young professional hoping to get their break. In a way, I can only hope that my love of literature can be rekindled to put a dent in the lack of love that consumes me. I spent my whole life being lost in the world and words of others, but then he came along, and I spent my time being lost in the world and the words of him.

But he's gone now, he's gone.

And he isn't coming back.

But books are still here.

Books are forever.

I need a routine. I need a reason to get up in the morning. There is only so much reality TV and tubs of ice cream that one can put away before the tentacles of depression begin to snake under the blankets. I allowed Christian to seduce me, I allowed him to obliterate me, I will not allow him to bury me. The five stages of grief are alarmingly similar to the five stages of a break up. What's even more alarming is that just when you think you've moved on from one stage to another, they bleed into one and you're living a hell you never knew existed.

The first step is…

 **Denial.**

I think this is the step with the greatest degree of longevity. You wallow in this step for a long, long time, don't you think? I did, for sure. I waded in the quagmire of my own refusal to believe. It didn't make sense. We were _happy._ We were disgustingly happy. We were the kind of happy people that make you want to throw up when you see them gaze across a candlelit table into the other's eyes. And so, I couldn't believe he would do what he did, I _wouldn't_ believe he would do what he did. But reality is reality, and reality doesn't change for anyone at any time… so then you have no choice but to graduate to…

 **Anger.**

I didn't spend too much time studying this course. And I think I know why… it's because I am stupid and self-loathing enough to still love him. And you can get the angriest you've ever been with the people you love the most, but it is a transient anger. It's a drifter, it's a hobo. It flitters around for a while, letting everyone know it's in town, and then it hops on a freight train and you're left alone, without the raging comfort it so temporarily provided. Then it's time for another matriculation.

This time to…

 **Bargaining.**

This is my only source of my tentative self-respect. I did _not_ bargain, I did _not_ plead, I did _not_ beg. Aside from calling and calling and trying to ascertain the truth, I did not lower myself to crawling on the sidewalk and weeping with the want of his love. I didn't write a sonnet, I didn't compose a soundtrack, I didn't script a screenplay. I didn't create tokens of my love and send them to him in a red envelope, sealed with a kiss. I did not bargain. Which was great and all, but it _did_ mean skipping a grade and going right to…

 **Depression.**

Did I mention all the reality TV and the tubs of ice cream? I think I did. But what I didn't mention was the terrified trip I took to my doctor, or the mortified conversation that took place concerning my sinking ship of mental health. Dr Gunther was polite and professional and assured me that what I was feeling was completely normal, completely understandable. It was nothing to be ashamed of, and that it would pass. Time, he said, was the greatest healer that he could possibly prescribe. That, and a shitload of antidepressants. A couple of weeks and chemical castration later and, hey presto, we're moving on up again. This time we're headed to…

 **Acceptance.**

I've just started this course and let me tell you, it's a bastard. I was always a straight A student, but I am flunking and I'm flunking hard. I don't understand the material: life is my teacher and she's a fucking bitch, and the only other people in the class are bitter and middle-aged. I can't see the board; my pen doesn't work, and I have no one to eat lunch with. I don't know if I can graduate from this class, because there's not another school of thought to subscribe to. When you're done with acceptance, you're out in the world with only one paddle to steady your capsizing ship. I guess you could say that this job interview is my attempt to calm the waters…

Time will tell.

And now that we're talking about time, it's time to go. I bite my lip as I look in the mirror and assess myself. My skirt and blouse are professional, but youthful and my hair is tidy, but individualistic. My make-up is minimal, but present, and my brows are manicured and defined. I am as good as I am going to get, and I have to go now, or I never will. It takes me longer than usual to leave my apartment and enter the world, but I guess that's to be expected. Slipping into Bertha, my new and trusted rust-heap, I inch into Seattle traffic with bated breath.

 _You can do this._

 _You can do this and you will do this._

 _And if you can't, at least you tried and at least you tried hard._

Is it corny to tell oneself that?

Whatever, maybe it is, maybe it isn't. My appreciation for shame is much lower these days. That tends to happen when you suffer the embarrassment of seeing the love of your life here, there and everywhere in the clutches of a woman who is consistently and overtly everything you aren't. Traffic is light and I am grateful, asBertha gets me to my destination in record time. Pulling into a vacant space in the pretty scant lot, I squint up at the shiny building that will either spit me out or hold me tight.

It's a relatively new start-up.

Only thirteen months old.

A toddler.

But still, beggars can't be choosers, right?

Ten minutes go by and I pump myself up like a punctured bicycle tire and suddenly, it's time to get my ass in there. My heart is in my mouth and my tonsils are shivering with drought as I walk with heels that I hate into the sterile reception area. This is the first step I have taken towards rehabilitation, and like an alcoholic, I am yearning for the comfort of the bottle. Or in my case, the safety of my apartment. But that is not an option and I march up to the reception desk as if I don't have a hole in my heart and announce myself.

The pretty girl behind the desk smiles her understanding and makes a call.

Hanging up, she points to a modern waiting area and her eyes are kind.

"Please take a seat, Miss Steele, you will be called shortly."

I give my thanks and teeter off towards my allocated resting place. No one else is here and I offer a silent thanks. I am not in a place to do small talk, of any description. As I glance around the artfully uncovered walls, I feel the tiniest spark of excitement flicker in my stomach. At first, I think it's a menstrual cramp, it's been so long since I felt anything other than pain… but then I recognize it and a small smile spreads across my face. I should have put balm on my lips, they stretch painfully under the now unfamiliar expression.

Before I can ponder further on the marvels of positive emotion, there is a stirring.

Another young woman appears from a side office and strides efficiently to my side.

"Miss Anastasia Steele?"

She is polite, clipped and efficient.

She is also gorgeous.

I am very, _very_ tired of gorgeous women and yet, Seattle seems to be brimming with them. Surely someone, somewhere is no higher than a solid three?Why must I be surrounded by hardcore tens everywhere I go? Do you think that I'm being punished for something terrible I did in a prior life?

Easy Ana, you don't believe in reincarnation, remember?

"That's me," I say brightly, surprising myself with my own voice.

She smiles in return.

"It's nice to meet you, I am Harriet Nesbitt. Would you follow me?"

 _Harriet._

That's a nice name.

Sighing internally, I rise and try to keep up with her furious gait. We climb a winding staircase to stop at a solid oak door that screams money. Knocking sharply, Harriet pushes it open and ushers me into the maroon colored room beyond. A man sits behind an impressive desk that is littered with manuscripts, post-its and a top-of-the-line Mac computer. She is blocking my view with her slender frame and I cannot gauge him properly.

"Anastasia Steele for you Sir, she is your eleven AM."

"Thank you, Harriet, why don't you go on and have a long lunch? You've earned it."

She smiles her thanks and bows her way out of the room with grace.

He stands and I get my first real look at him. He's young, maybe early to mid-thirties. A thick mop of floppy black hair adorns his head and his eyes are a piercing blue. He's dressed in an impeccable but plain suit, with an open-collared shirt that gives him a casual, but professional demeanor. Striding out from behind the desk he assesses me with shrewd eyes and extends a polite hand, offset heavily by his genial smile. As I grasp it, it is warm and broad and he shakes with a gentle firmness. His voice is clear and pleasant as he releases me and takes a step back.

"Welcome, Miss Steele. Allow me to introduce myself, my name is Jack Hyde."


	3. Chapter 3

Have you ever fantasised about fatally spilling the blood of another?

Dark and disturbed as I am, that particular fantasy has never been a heavy hitter for me. I don't like blood and I don't like extreme violence. But for the vapid bitch attached to my arm, I'm happy to make an exception. There are photographers everywhere, so I can't wrench myself free from her cloying grip. Her talons are embedding into my skin as she poses in a three-thousand-dollar dress, courtesy of yours fucking truly. The rich and restless surround us, all with the same vacant smiles on their stupid faces. She fits right in. She slips into a society ten tiers above her station with an ease that I have no choice but to provide. The red carpet is starchy under my feet as she sweeps along beside me, apparently oblivious to the goosebumps of disgust that prickle at her touch.

A particularly gutsy journalist suddenly springs forward.

"Mr Grey, Miss Spector… rumors are rife that there are wedding bells in the air for you two, that your relationship has been fast and furious. Can you give any comment? Do these rumors have any basis in fact?"

My heart stops as her teeth glint like fangs in the dusky air. _Rumors are rife…_ I'll fucking bet they are, and I know exactly where they came from. My blood runs cold as she opens her mouth, satanic delight glowing in her soulless eyes. I think of tomorrow's headline, I think of Anastasia's face as she catches a glimpse of it and white-hot rage lances through me. My years of directing my staff with as little verbiage as humanly possibly pays off as I murmur out of the corner of my mouth, lowly, so only she can hear.

"You answer that, and I'll rip your fucking head clean off your shoulders."

She smiles that serpentine smile and bats her disgustingly artificial eyelashes at the hopeful gutter rat, before moving along with an outer gracefulness that doesn't match up with her inner gracelessness. I cannot interrogate her now, not here. But _fuck me_ the minute this farce is over… there are going to be words exchanged, the like of which she has never heard before. One of the few perks of being dead inside… is that your face registers little to no emotion. Inside, I am beheading her with a rusty blade, severing her arteries with a slow delicacy. Outside, I am playing my role… doing what needs to be done… and no one is any the fucking wiser.

"Smile," she hisses under her breath as we nod at a Senator I don't care about. "You look miserable. You're supposed to be supporting a good cause with the love of your life by your side. You need to _look_ like it. Otherwise, I'm not getting what I want and we both know the consequences of my dissatisfaction, don't we?"

The urge to disembowel this bitch is growing by the day.

"Shut the fuck up," I spit back, somehow managing to look docile all the while. "Don't speak to me unless it's absolutely unavoidable and loosen your grip on my fucking arm. Physical contact with you makes my stomach turn and you don't want me to vomit all over your pretty dress now, do you?"

She glows with psychotic guile.

"Oh, it's ok if you do. You can just buy me another one."

My hands twitch. They vibrate with the instinctive and primal urge to wrap themselves around her slender neck and compress her windpipe until the last wisp of life leaves her demonic being. But, the cameras are on us and I am a respected CEO, not a crazed murderer. My strongest defense kicks into gear, my _go-to_ calming mechanism when the bitch pushes me to the pin of my collar. I close my eyes and she floods my mind. I can smell her, I can taste her, I can _feel_ her. Her twinkling blue eyes, wide and deep set. Her shiny, silky brown hair, tumbling around her shoulders. Her innocence, her purity. Her laugh, her passion for life. Her… everything.

Anastasia is the armor that Autumn cannot breach.

The rest of the night passes in a nightmarish haze. I shake hands that belong to people I don't give a flying fuck about. I make small talk with people that I couldn't identify in a line-up and I dissociate myself through photo after photo with the smirking tramp at my side. Her perfume burns my nostrils, her tinkling laugh curdles my undigested dinner. Every time I inch my arm out of her grasp, she claws it back with a bite, like some kind of necrotising disease one catches by fucking a rabid rhino in the innermost regions of the Congo.

By the time the elite are let loose on the streets, I'm exhausted.

Taylor appears out of nowhere like Mother Theresa and I realize then and there… I love him. Every time the tramp is getting too close, too unbearable… he arrives like a noble knight on a white steed. I don't care that I pay him and schedule him, it's the fucking imagery of the whole thing. I disentangle myself from her with all the difficulty one would expect in escaping an octopus in mating season. My time is done, my watch has ended… for now.

"Catch a cab," I snarl, "I'm not bringing you home. _Rumors are rife that wedding bells are in the air…_ you fucking bitch, you think I don't know that was you? You think I don't know what you're doing? You go running to your second-rate journalist friend _one_ more time and have me ambushed again… and I'll end you. Do you understand me?"

She tosses her curled, blonde hair behind her shoulder with a bored expression.

"Empty threats are tiresome, Christian. Now take me home. I'm very tired."

Did I stutter?

Have I developed some sort of speech impediment?

I highly doubt it.

"I don't know if you're deaf or just straight-up stupid, but I'm pretty sure that I told you already… I'm not bringing you home. There's a bottle of sanitizer in the car that I need to douse myself in, and it won't be very effective if I bring the infection along for the ride. So, be a good little tramp and hail yourself a cab. Or walk, and fall into a river, or get mugged by the reincarnation of Jack the Ripper, I don't give a shit. Just know that my time on the stage is done for tonight, ok?"

I don't give her the time to fashion an answer.

The car welcomes me like a crackling fireplace and a bottle of Scotch. Taylor doesn't speak, merely throwing me a sympathetic glance and heading straight to Escala. I brood. I stare out the window and watch Seattle zip by in a haze of street lights and frivolity. People are out, they're enjoying themselves, they're with the people who are important to them. I remember what that's like, to be with the person who is most important. I remember what it's like to go for dinner, to go for an evening walk. To simply be in each other's company. I remember how she would always get distracted by the storefront windows that displayed what she termed _knickknacks_ and _curios._ She loves things like that. It feels like a lifetime ago, but in reality, it's only been three months.

But I've died a million fucking deaths in those twelve weeks.

And there's no light at the end of the tunnel.

There is no tunnel at all.

Twenty-three minutes pass before we pull into the underground garage at Escala. Twenty-eight passes before I'm in the shower, scrubbing myself raw, trying and failing to rid myself of her stench. I own the most expensive shampoo and shower gel known to man, and they don't make a fucking dent. I can still smell her on my skin, see the phantom marks of her plot on my arm. The water is close to boiling, the steam surges through the bathroom, and still… I am soiled. I am disgusting, I am contaminated. I have been infected since that fateful night at that fateful gala… and I doubt if I'll ever be pure again.

Not that I ever was…

Pure.

Turning the scalding water off at the mains, I wrap a towel around myself and squelch my way into the kitchen. Mrs Jones has opened a bottle of Sancerre to breathe and it smells delectable. I pour it down the sink and make a mental note to tell her to clear the place of my stock. Sancerre is something I now associate with Anastasia and drinking it alone… is intolerable. I'm restless, I glance around the empty penthouse and my inability to relax engulfs me. Why do I have this mammoth fucking apartment? So it can remind me of how alone I am with every reverberating echo?

Maybe I should downsize.

The piano calls to me. I run my hands along the fine ivory keys and feel a tiny prickle of peace stir inside me. Slipping onto the stool, I close my eyes and the sterile apartment is soon singing with the dulcet tones of _Marcello's BWV 974 – Adagio._ Bach rewrote it after Marcello's time, but I prefer the original score. It has a rawness to it that speaks to me, that stands in solidarity with my emptiness, my self-imposed isolation. Just as my neurons begin to smooth at the edges of their frayed beings, the music is shattered.

Taylor appears out of nowhere and I know instantly… it's not good.

"What is it? Tell me quickly."

He doesn't hesitate.

"Sir, Miss Spector is outside the building. She insists that she must see you. She says if you do not let her in, she is going to go straight to Miss Steele's home and… speak with her. I've told her you're not in, but she's not buying it and she's becoming slightly irrational. I don't think she knows where Miss Steele lives. I've respected your wishes and not sought that information out myself but… I shouldn't imagine it would be too difficult to find. If she doesn't know the address now, I don't think it will be long before she does."

The music dies.

I close my eyes.

I haven't felt this trapped, this cornered since… since before.

"Send her up," I hear myself say, without actually meaning to mouth the words. "Send the bitch up. But stay close, Taylor. Out of sight, but close. Have Sawyer on standby. Whatever this is, it's not good. If I need her to be removed or restrained, I need it done without delay. Is that clear?"

He nods with his impenetrable confidence.

"Crystal, Sir. I'll escort her up. ETA, five minutes."

I use that five minutes wisely. I dress myself to suit my audience. Not an inch of unnecessary skin is exposed as I shove myself into jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, complete with sweater. By the time Taylor strides off the elevator, I'm sitting on the sofa, apparently engrossed in a stock market report on the flat screen. I don't look up as she enters, I don't give her that satisfaction. He retreats as planned, and I know he's taking up occupancy in my study.

She strides to stand in front of me, still dressed in her (my) finery.

"We need to talk."

I look up, tapping the remote against my chin and appraise her coldly.

"Are you suffering from some kind of neurological condition? Are your limited brain cells being blitzed by some kind of disease? Or do you really have this much difficulty in understanding plain fucking English? I told you that you were _never_ to come here. This is my home… and I don't like vermin in my home. And yet… the rat is in the house and I don't have any poison at hand. So, what the _fuck_ do you want now, Autumn? The shirt off my back? The personal access code to my bank accounts? An organ donation? Please, let me know. Apparently, I now live to appease you and your sick fucking games… so _what's it to be?"_

She licks her lips and my stomach caterwauls.

She literally makes me sick.

 _Literally._

"Christian… there's no point in beating around the bush, so I'll just come right out and say it. I can't pretend anymore. I can't carry on with deceiving myself that I don't feel the way I do. When I started this, you were just a means to an end. A vehicle for my plan. But you've become more than that, to me, much more. I've never been with a man who didn't… want me, in that way. You're the first to ever say _no_ to me, and I'm tiring of it. I want you. I desire you. All of you. And I think that, deep down, you want me to. You know you can never go back to Anastasia, that ship has sailed. But that's no reason to stand stranded on the shore for the rest of your life. I'm a pretty solid ship and I have room for one more."

Her cheeks are flushed.

Her eyes are glinting.

She's… she's _nervous._

It takes a while, it really does. I'm usually sharper than this, but hey… even the Christian Greys of the world have an off day. I stare at her nonplussed for several moments before the trickle of comprehension begins to drip into my brain. My gagging reflex is engaged, my sense of repulsion reverberates within me and my mouth shrivels up as if I'm sucking the bitterest of lemons.

"I beg your pardon?"

I don't even recognize my own voice.

I didn't know it could sound so cold.

She doesn't miss a fucking beat.

"I want you, Christian. Every woman wants you, but I have to be _close_ to you and attempt to ignore my feelings. I can't do it anymore. And I know that you're too hung up on that silly girl to see sense, to see how sensationally good we could be together. We look the part, Christian, someone like you was always destined to end up with someone like me. So, let me help you make the right decision. I know you'll thank me in the end, I just know it."

She moves closer and I'm instantly on my feet.

Backing the fuck away.

"You can feel it, can't you? You know it'd be amazing, you know I could make you feel things that she never could. I'm a woman, Christian, and she's a girl. And a man like you needs a woman, a woman like me. So, I'll make my needs plain. You and I are going to add a… carnal aspect to our already established arrangement, and after some time, you're going to realize I was right all along. You're going to forget all about Anastasia Steele and realize that I'm the kind of person you belong with."

Her hands flit up to play with the straps of her (my) ball gown.

"And that realization is going to begin right here, right now… or I tell her _everything."_

There are some moments in life that make the world stand still.

This is such a moment.

She is suspended in front of me and the room around her dissolves into nothingness, distorting her frame into a grotesque balloon of itself. My breath catches in my windpipe and a tidal wave of sickening anger sweeps through me, catching me by surprise with it's foaming fury. My eyes narrow and I lock her down with my gaze. _This fucking bitch is the cause of the most miserable moments of my life._ I didn't know the kind of happiness available to humankind before I met Ana, therefore I didn't miss it. But then I tasted it, and this whore from hell took it away from me and I've been left starving, emaciated. A shadow of myself, prancing along at her heels upon command, obeying her every word.

A feral snarl plays about my lips.

I'm done.

I'm so fucking done they need to rewrite the definition of _done._

She wants me to fuck her. She wants to lay in my bed with me, to lay with me as one. She wants to lie where Anastasia lay, to do the things she did, to receive the things she received. A smokescreen flits across my vision, I cannot see clearly. I cannot think clearly. I can't do anything clearly. She takes another step toward me, that much I can see. I take another step backwards, holding my hands up, warning her off.

But she keeps coming and the rage tinges like rust on my tongue.

"Christian, you know you want me-"

The crystal vase explodes into smithereens, careering around the room like a soft summer shower. I missed, I missed deliberately, but I can't guarantee I'll miss if I try again. She stops, stunned. Looking around the room, her face registers amazement. She opens her mouth and licks her lips, before moving her hand up to pull the straps of her (my) dress down from her shoulders.

It is then that I fucking lose it.

I don't really know what's happening. I haven't lost control like this since I was fourteen years old. All I know is that I'm screaming, that I'm moving forwards with hatred in my heart, that there's real fear on her face as she's backing away. Taylor barrels out of nowhere, his arm winds me as it snakes around my waist, pulling me backwards. He roars over his shoulder, commands her to leave. I'm launching obscenity after obscenity at her as she turns cold and calculating yet again.

With one last long and sweeping look at me, in all my broken glory…

She leaves.

And I know where she is going.

"Stop her," I grunt, and Taylor instantly releases me. I straighten my clothing, already ashamed of my descent into the chaos of long ago. "Stop her," I repeat, "Do whatever you have to do, Taylor. She _cannot_ be allowed to get to Anastasia. I have to be the one… it's over, but I have to be the one. I need her to be kept away, no matter the cost. I know where Ana will be tomorrow… I will find her. I need a day. A full day. Can you do that?"

He looks at me with that impassive expression and nods.

"Yes, Sir."

I wave a hand, limp with flourishing fatigue.

"Then go, do. Keep me informed. Use whatever initiative and resources you need."

The apartment shrieks with emptiness and disarray when he's gone. It feels perverse, violated. I no longer feel at home here. There's glass everywhere, the physical evidence of my shameful loss of control. I turn away from it in disgust, my heart still hammering with a painful gait. I retreat to my bedroom, sit on the edge of the bed that we once shared and drop my head into my hands, tearing at my hair. This moment was inevitable. In a way, I think I always knew that. I was just too much of a fucking coward to admit it to myself.

Tomorrow's the date.

The date that haunts me, plagues me, is the ruination of me.

I know where she will be.

I know what I must do.

I let the darkness blanket me. These few hours are the last that remain to me, the last that are mine. When day breaks, nothing will ever be the same again. They say that it's always darkest before the dawn, that even the darkest night must give way to the sun. Well, I call bullshit on that front. Because no matter how dark this night is, it's nothing compared to the apocalyptic inkiness that is coming my way.

Morning breaks with an indecent haste.

It's ten AM when the car pulls to a halt in the underground garage. I've been up for five hours already. Sawyer is driving. Taylor is otherwise engaged, thank fuck. There are no words spoken, I merely pass him the address and he slides the car into gear. My mind is whirring. This is the singularly most difficult thing I am ever going to have to do in my life. I thought the event that this event is predicated upon was the most difficult thing, but its not.

And I think that tells me everything I need to know about myself.

I am a selfish bastard.

A self-absorbed, conniving and self-invested little prick.

None of this would be happening if I knew how to think about other people. None of this would be happening if I knew how to put my needs behind the rights of others. None of this would be happening if I knew how to be a decent fucking human being. The car zips along faster than I want it to, but I don't complain. Getting there ten minutes later isn't going to change anything.

One way or another, this is happening.

I swallow after ten more minutes of silent travel.

We're here.

I tell Sawyer to wait, and slip from the car. This is going to be the longest and shortest walk of my life. The sights are familiar, the smells are familiar. I've been here before. But I was wearing a mask, I was in disguise. I wasn't who I truly am. But as I walk in there today, I'm naked. I am who I truly am, with no filter or alteration.

No more illusions.

The grass is wet and springy underfoot. The scent of the rain is upon the air. I never realized how potent a smell it was. All my senses are heightened. I feel the soft breeze acutely, I hear the birds chirping to pitch-perfect accuracy. My legs are struggling to operate, they are leaden. I force one in front of the other, I trudge along. Before long, I spot her, and my pupils explode with emotion. Her back is to me, her long mane of dark hair spilling over her spine. A beige coat flanks her frame, wrapped tightly around her torso. Her head is bent low, she will not hear or see me until I am upon her.

The crunch of gravel gives me away.

Her head swings upwards, her neck swivels in my direction. Her eyes splinter into shards of angry bewilderment when she spies me, her disbelief fleeting. She takes a step back, I take a step forward. Her face drains of all color and she mouths wordlessly at me. I have rehearsed this conversation in my mind a thousand times over, but I am stricken dumb. I split my dry lips, but no words of explanation drop from them. Her bewilderment is blooming into full-scale anger the longer she stares at me and I know my time for speech is growing short.

"Ana-"

"How _dare_ you? How _could_ you? Come here? Of all places, of all days?"

God it's been so long since I've heard her voice.

"Ana, please-"

" _Leave._ Don't ever come back here, don't even think about coming back here. You sunk lower than low with _her_ , but _this?_ This is inhumane. Do you hate me, is that it? Is this some sort of sordid revenge for some imaginary slight?"

Her words are raw, coated in embedded pain.

I open my mouth yet again, hoping against hope for inspiration.

I yearn to reach out, to touch her. To hold her in my arms, to feel the realness of her. It is of course, out of the question. It is out of the stratosphere, never mind the question. But still, I yearn, and I yearn so much it burns. My hands twitch with the desire, but I ball them into fists and clamp them by my sides. Her blue eyes are beginning to swim with furious tears as I look over her head, thinking and drowning in tandem.

How do I do this?

How can I possibly do this?

This is the sincerest pain I have ever known. Anything before this, is irrelevant. I shudder under the slicing anguish and in a blink of an eye, it gets worse. It gets so much fucking worse. I see Taylor, first. He's sprinting. He's sprinting harder than I've ever seen him sprint before. And the reason for his haste readily becomes apparent. She's marching with a determined look of malevolent ire splashed across her porcelain face. She's yards and yards ahead of him, he'll never get to her in time. She's closer than close to Anastasia, I was so caught up in my self-absorbed shit that I didn't spot her in time.

My throat constricts.

This cannot happen.

She cannot be the one to tell her.

She spies my horror and pivots on her heel. I cannot see her face, but I can see her back. And it stiffens to a ramrod straight as she sees her marching advance. She turns back to me in amazement, her eyes bleeding with betrayal. I shake my head wildly.

 _No, no… this isn't my doing… I never wanted this…_

Autumn's face splits into a victorious smile of callous indifference. She is going to tell her. She is going to drop the bomb. Hers is the face and voice Anastasia will always recall when she thinks of the news, which she will think of often. It's that fact that spurs me into action. Throwing caution to the fucking wind, I dart around her and shield her from Autumn with my back. I have about twenty-three seconds to do this, and the clock is ticking.

"Ana, listen to me," I urge, desperation dripping in my words. "This thing with me and _her,_ it's not what you think. We never slept together, we were never together. It was all a con, an illusion. She was blackmailing me and using you as leverage. She wanted to marry a billionaire, she wanted her name on the invitations that matter, and I was her gravy train. Please, Ana, believe me. I _never_ touched her, I _never_ cared one iota for her, and I've _never_ stopped loving you."

She sways on her feet.

Confusion splashes across her face.

Her lips move soundlessly.

I have about thirteen seconds left.

My eyes beg her to listen to the words she has no obligation to listen to.

"Blackmailing you," she whispers in the smallest voice I've ever heard, "Blackmailing you with _what?"_

I close my eyes.

I brace my soul, what's left of it, to be ripped into a million shards.

With terror in my heart, I point with a clammy hand to the answer.

She looks down in befuddlement, glancing back up with questions engraved into her skin. The granite glints up at us in the morning light. The scripture is as embedded into my brain as it is into the rock. I remember the chain of events that led to those words as well as I remember the words themselves. That night was the spark that led to this fire, it was a slow burn, but the truth will always find a way.

 ** _In loving memory of Carla May Adams._**

 ** _1963-2008_**

 ** _Devoted mother, beloved wife and cherished friend._**

 ** _Taken far too young._**

 ** _May she rest in eternal peace._**

"My mom?" she murmurs in amazement, "What are you _talking_ about?"

Autumn is five feet away.

It's now or never.

"I was the drunk driver, Ana," I whisper as my throat closes in, "I'm the one who killed your mom, I'm the one they never found."

Autumn is three feet way.

"When you fell into my office three years later, and I took one look at your face, your eyes… I knew you were your mother's daughter."

Autumn is two feet away.

"I was compelled to get to know you. To try and make the amends that I knew weren't possible, I couldn't control myself, help myself…"

Autumn is a singular foot away.

My voice breaks, my world shatters and the truth is finally floating free.

"I never expected to fall in love with you..."

Autumn is upon us as I brokenly whisper the words that have haunted me, day and night, for years.

"I'm so sorry, Anastasia."

…

TBC

…..


	4. Chapter 4

I watch the explosion of heartrending comprehension burst in her eyes.

She takes a step back from me, her head shaking wildly, tremors beginning to rack her thin frame. Her mouth moves silently, forming the word _no_ over and over again. The color is flooding from her face, she's turning into a post-mortem poster child right in front of my eyes. Every fibre of my being screams and burns, begging me to match her step and pool her into my arms. But that cannot be and somehow and suddenly… I have bigger fucking problems.

 _Autumn._

She's right behind her now, within the spread of a fingertip.

But so is Taylor.

Autumn opens her whore mouth, her filthy eyes alight with malicious victory. Panting and beet red in the face but finally fucking present, Taylor gives me a questioning look. I throw back a curt nod and Autumn's screeches of protest suddenly reverberate around the cemetery. Anastasia jerks in shock and twists around to see the blonde bitch from hell being bodily removed from the leafy graveyard. I glance around quickly to see if there are any shocked bystanders amongst us, ready to call the police at the strange sight unfolding in a place that's supposed to be all about the processing of grief and peace.

Small miracle, there isn't.

It's just me and Anastasia, and the retreating back of Taylor.

With that _tramp_ slung over his shoulder.

He'll keep her contained until I can decide what happens next.

…. or until Anastasia decides what happens next.

She's looking at me as if she's never seen me before in her life, and I realize… she hasn't. She's never known me for what I really am. The coward who turned her world upside down, the bastard who turned her into a biological orphan. This moment is nowhere near as hard as I thought it would be, it's a million times fucking harder. The raw pain that she's in, the agony that embroils her… it makes me sick. It makes me physically yearn to wretch, to try and rid myself of the illness within me.

But I can't.

That shit has been buried far too deep, for far too long, to ever leave me.

Her words are spoken in a voice I've never heard her use.

It's guttural, almost alien.

It's not the voice of Anastasia Steele, that's for sure.

"You fucking _liar._ How could you use my mother's death as a cover up for the fact that you've been sleeping with that filthy whore?! Who _are_ you? Because, you're not the man I fell in love with. You… you're not even a man at all."

She takes a step closer to me and I can tell she's itching to slap me across the face.

I hope she does.

I hope she knocks the teeth from my skull.

"Anastasia-"

"How can you stand there and _lie_ to me like this? I thought the worst thing you could ever do, was what you did with _her._ But this… this is the worst thing anyone could do to another human being. You said you loved me, you said I was the reason you turned your life around, but that was all bullshit. That was all to get me into your bed and you into my head. You haven't changed, you probably don't have the capability to change. You come here, on the anniversary of my mom's death and you bring your _tart_ with you… and tell me this little fantasy of yours? Are you bored of her, is that it? You're tired of the blonde diversion and you want to get back to beating the shit out of little brown-haired girls so you can remember _your_ mom, is that it?"

My heart clenches and the bottom of my stomach teeters on the brink of falling out. Her words are bullets, laced in arsenic. They're lacerating my vital fucking organs and I don't know which is way up. The prospect of her not believing me never occurred to me and the extent of my bone crushing stupidity hits me right in the face. How could I _not_ have foreseen this? How could I not have been prepared for this? We never spoke about the death of her mom, she could never bring herself to form the words and now I am here, on the anniversary of the worst day of her life, telling her that some of the best days of her life… were all a lie. A fabrication. That when she thought she was laying with the love of her life, she was actually laying with the locust of her life.

A monster.

The night in question swims before my eyes. I don't remember it, to my utter fucking shame, I don't remember it. I just remember waking up at the wheel, cut three ways from hell. Everything ached, everything was a blur. The airbags were out, they were drenched in blood. The wheels of the car were still spinning as the shards of the shattered windshield sprinkled down around us. I remember looking to my side and being startled by how alert she was, how calm she seemed to be. How she brimmed with the ability to process the scene that I couldn't comprehend.

She took over, called all the right people and I avoided all the legal and moral consequences that should have been slapped down on me. I'd never _ever_ gotten behind the wheel of a car with alcohol in my body before in my life. What possessed me that night, I still don't know. I doubt that I'll ever know. All I know is that I did, I got behind the wheel of my car with alcohol in my body and in doing so, I took the life of another.

The life of one Carla May Adams.

The mother of one Anastasia Rose Steele.

And from that day, I've never been whole.

"Ana, please, I'm not lying. I was drunk. I was so fucking _drunk._ I don't know why I did it, I don't know why I got into that car and drove it. I wish I did, you have no idea how much I wish I did… how I wish I could give you the answers you deserve. But I can't. I can't remember… I can't remember any of it. I just remember waking up after the crash, with my hands still on the wheel… and your mom…."

My voice breaks.

For the first time in my life, I am freely near tears of shame.

"Her eyes were open, I could see them… both our windshields were completely smashed in… so I could see them. She looked like she was awake, like she was looking for a way out. But I knew, I knew deep down that she was dead and that I was the one who killed her. There was nothing I could do. There was nothing anyone could do. I… left. Help was called, redundant help, and I left. I saw her eyes that night and every night thereafter until you fell into my office and I saw those eyes in the flesh for the second time. And… I thought if I could just get to know you, I could somehow make amends. I was delusional, a delusional coward… but I never in my wildest dreams thought I'd end up falling in love with you. That was the cruellest thing I could ever have done and there can be no apologies…"

She shakes her head once more, disbelief spilling from her eyes.

Her voice is a whisper now, coated in seething shock.

"I never told you this. I never told anyone about this and this is how I know that you're the lowest of the low, that there are no depths to which you will not sink, that you are the filthiest liar I have ever known."

Another step towards me is taken.

"The cops pulled CCTV footage from an abandoned Wendy's near the scene of the crash. The place was closed, but the cameras still worked. And they caught a glimpse of the driver. Not enough to provide a mugshot or a likeness that could be released, but a decent glimpse nonetheless. And that glimpse tells me that you're a fucking liar, Christian Grey, and that you're everything you ever said you were. A fucking _monster."_

Another step towards me is taken.

"The driver was distinctly more than middle-aged and distinctly blonde."

Another step towards me is taken.

"And distinctly _female."_

…

TBC

…..


	5. Chapter 5

My face is still ringing from the slap Ana delivered across my right cheek.

I should never have tried to touch her, I should never have tried to restrain her, to stop her from leaving the cemetery. What right do I have to try and force her to listen to a truth I kept hidden from her, for so long? What right do I have to try and make her see the extent of my regret, the depths of my disgust for myself? I have no right, I have no right at all. But her revelations have turned my world upside down, they've shattered everything I've believed about myself for the last four years. I don't even have the words to describe what is inside of me right now, my brain matter seems to melt like a snowflake on landing. My confusion is so visceral, so all-consuming… it's contaminating my entire blood volume, lacerating my every muscle and sinew.

The hammering I'm doing on the oak door could wake the dead.

But not Carla.

No, not Carla.

Cara is never, ever coming back.

It bursts open and there she is, in all her splendour, still as pristinely made-up in the morning as she would be in the evening. Her face registers shock at what I'm sure is my deranged looking appearance. She opens her mouth, but I don't fuck around, I don't hang around. I push past her, roughly, and storm into her home, the home I know so well. She closes the door softly and sweeps down the hall after me, and into the kitchen where I stand, clutching the back of a dining chair, counting on it to support my weight.

"Christian, what the hell is the meaning of-"

"I want to know everything there is to know about that night. No detail is to be left out, no matter how small or insignificant. I want to know what went down from the moment we left that dining table to the moment I woke up in that car. I want to know _everything,_ and I want to know _now._ If you lie to me, if you leave anything out… I'm going to know and I'm going to rip your fucking head clean off your shoulders. You have my word on that, my truest word. _"_

Her mouth drops open.

Meticulously curled hair swings into her face with shock.

"You dare to come into my _home_ and speak to _me_ like-"

The china cup that had been sitting so inoffensively on the dining table shatters to smithereens directly above her head. She jump and shrieks in tandem, a spastic movement of disbelief. The chair screeches across the tile floor as I shove it roughly away from me and stalk to her, invading her personal space with my pulsating frame of fury. I'm taller, much taller, and I look down at her with a confused anger so acute it wraps a hand around my windpipe, strangling me from the inside.

" _Yes,"_ I breathe, the air whistling through my teeth, "I dare."

My eyes close for a split second, willing me to control myself.

"Because there are some facts that just aren't adding up, you see. I've just come from the cemetery, I went to see Anastasia. Today is the anniversary of Carla's death, as you know. And as you _also_ know, that demonic bitch, Autumn, has had my balls in a vice ever since Ana unwittingly brought her into our home and she remembered the night she hitchhiked on a dark country road, and saw a terrible crash… and the drunk driver responsible. But I couldn't take it or her anymore and she was going to tell Anastasia everything. I couldn't let that happen, I had to be the one to tell her… to tell her everything."

Her eyes are widening, her pupils dilating in… fear?

"And so I did, I told her everything. Every devious, disgusting fact. All about how I killed her mother, how I instantly recognized her as Carla's daughter when she tripped into my office, how I became consumed by her, enchanted by her. How I hid my dirty little secret all these years, how I was found out, by the fucking piano tuning bitch from hell. How I was blackmailed, how I cowardly yielded to the leverage that tramp held over my head like a guillotine. How I convinced myself that I was doing it for her benefit, to protect her from the hurt that would come crashing down if I didn't dance the dance of a puppet. I expected her to attack me, to turn me into the police, to have some sort of visceral _reaction…"_

She tries to inch away from me, but there's a brick fucking wall blocking her path.

"But that's not what happened, that's not what happened at all. As a matter of fact, a complete deviation from what I expected happened. You see, Ana knew more about the crash that killed her mother than she ever said, the memory being, naturally, too painful to fucking chitchat about. But, she managed to mention a few facts at the graveside of her mother today, facts that I was unaware of… facts that don't make any fucking _sense…"_

Bewilderment and a touch of arrogance color her eyes.

I don't waste time dwelling on it.

"She said that the police had, in the course of their investigation, tapped the CCTV system attached to an abandoned Wendy's near the scene of the crash. They didn't get much, but they got enough to establish the basics about the driver. And that driver wasn't a male twenty-something, that driver was a female forty or fifty-something. A blonde, female, forty or fifty-something…"

I throw a sardonic hand down at my frame and raise a smouldering brow.

Before letting loose with a roar that surprises every fibre of my own being.

 _"_ _Does that fucking sound like me? DOES IT?"_

Horror spurts across her face like a hot geyser. But she recovers quickly, ever the pragmatist. Conniving intent gouges into her skin, almost as deep as the make-up she's plastered in. The smile that I am so accustomed to shines brightly, but it can't mask the deadening spread in her eyes, my knees weaken with a realization I was never prepared for, never dreamed of, could never hope for.

"Christian, darling," she simpers, "The girl is confused, she's in mourning, she doesn't-"

"It all makes fucking sense now," I whisper, unable to form a normal vocalization. "Why I could never remember anything, why no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't bring up the memory of getting behind the wheel of that car. I hate drunk driving, I hate reckless behavior that threatens the life of innocents. Everything was a blackout, from the moment we finished dinner, to the moment I woke up behind the wheel of that car, devastation at my fingertips."

My fist suddenly slams into the wall beside her head and she jumps.

"That dinner dance was the night I signed over twenty percent of GEH to you, as collateral for the bank to kickstart your business expansion. I didn't want to, you asked before that night and I refused you, we fought. I knew that growth was too much, too soon, I knew it would fail and I didn't want to part with such a large stake of my company. We reconciled at the dinner, you invited me as a show of good faith and as an apology for asking me in the first place. We had drinks over the meal, and that's the last I remember… but yet, when I woke up, I was the driver in a fatal road traffic collision and I was twenty percent down in the shareholding of my own company…"

Clarity.

HD clarity, it rips through me like shrapnel.

"I can hold my liquor, I don't drink too much, too often, but I can hold it. I didn't drink too much that night, I remember thinking about the meeting I had the next morning, I remember wanting to wake up with a level head. But everything was a blackout, as if I went on a binge to end all binges. But that's not true… is it? That's not true at all. You were drinking, but you weren't drunk. You… you put something in my drink, you dosed me and coerced me into signing over that collateral…"

Fuzzy, grainy memories pop up like a black and white silent movie in my brain.

The reason I could never remember getting behind the wheel…

Is because I never did get behind the wheel.

"You were driving," I breathe softly, "You were the one who drove home that night, you said you hadn't had too many, that there was no sense in waiting for a cab… you said it at the dinner table… right before everything goes black… you said it. And then… then you must have crashed the car, you veered into the wrong lane and crashed into Carla Adams' car… killing her instantly. I was still out of it and you saw your moment… you always were a strong one… you swapped us out. Me for you. You were oddly alert when I woke up, weirdly calm… I remember that. But the reason you were so alert and calm when I woke up… was because you'd already been awake for quite a while… plotting your scheme… finetuning it to perfection…"

She mouths wordlessly.

Truth, burning truth, trundles through me like a freight train.

"It all makes sense now. Why you were so fucking adamant that I stay away from Anastasia, why you hated her, why you shat all over our relationship at every turn. She was your only loose end, you thought I'd eventually get too close and spill my guts. But you didn't do your homework properly, did you? You didn't know about Autumn or the CCTV from Wendy's, you didn't know about any of that. But Autumn actually worked to your advantage, didn't she? She fortified the lie… she… holy _shit…_ you were the one… it was you…"

I can't breathe.

I've always been able to read her like a book, see her mind as she see's it…

But this is too much.

This is much, much too much.

"You told her to use Anastasia against me as leverage," I croak, "That way, your one threat to the sordid tale becoming public would be taken down. Autumn always seemed to know too much about me, seemed to know exactly what to say to wound me. Because she came to you before me, because she was coached, because she was _educated_ on the matter… fucking hell, _fucking hell…_ it all makes sense now. Why I could never remember, why I could never recall a single detail, why I always saw your calm face when I dreamt of that crash every night for months and months. You cleaned it all up, made me feel like I owed you, just so you could reel me in even closer, keep me tightly to your chest…"

How did I never see this?

How did I never know this?

How did I never consider this?

It's all been a lie. A despicable, deceitful, disgusting lie. I've been living a falsehood for four years, suffering under the weight of a crime I didn't commit and ruining my life in the process. Ana… _Ana…_ she was the only good thing I've ever had, the only light in my life and I snuffed her out, didn't I? I smothered her light with lies and subterfuge, with cowardice and callousness. And all to protect a lie I didn't know I was living. She's looking at me with terror blooming in her eyes, but her brain is working double-time. She's looking for a way out, desperately seeking another string to pull.

But there are no more strings.

I have to make a choice.

Now that I have all the facts, I have to make a decision.

I can either put her head through the brick wall she stands against or I can do what should have been done four years ago. I'm panting with the exertion of it, I'm sweating with the heat of revelations. But I make up my mind before I can unmake it and with a snarl that shouldn't be human, I reach into my pocket and draw out my cell. She watches it with wide eyes and bated breath, I'm still close, too close… close to wrapping my hands around her neck and wreaking karmic justice upon her.

I dial a number.

She stares and stares before snapping the snap of a deviant.

"What the _hell_ are you _doing?"_

I eye her coldly. Colder than coldly.

"I'm doing what should have been done four years ago."

I swallow and choke on the brick of truth that's sliding down my windpipe.

"I'm calling the fucking cops, Elena."

….

TBC

…


	6. Chapter 6

_I don't know how I ended up here…_

I don't know if I walked, ran or was driven here. All I know is that I am here, and therefore, subconsciously speaking, this is where I need to be. Normality. The pretence of normality, that's what I need right now. There's a ringing in my ears and my centre of gravity is way out of whack. Can this be real? Can this nightmare truly be happening?

My mom…

My scatter-brained, daydreaming mom.

Dead.

Cold.

Degraded.

How could he do this? How could he take the worst horror that has ever befallen me and twist it to justify his screwing around? He told me he was fifty shades of fucked up, but he didn't say he was _evil._ But apparently, he is. Because only a truly twisted, deviant psychopath could do something like this, lie about something like this, and all to justify the fact that they're nothing but a whore. I was drowning under the weight of his and Autumn's sordid affair, I was dying slowly with the disease of their degrading dishonesty…

But this?

 _This?_

Can you fucking believe _this?_

I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with him. I thought I was going to be Mrs Anastasia Grey one day, the mother of his children. I thought his morning began with me, his afternoon revolved around me and his night set for me. But that was all bullshit, a fairy-tale I was conditioned to believe by the writers of Disney classics and the authors of children's tales. This is real life. The burning, yet icy sensation that consumes me, that's real life. Humanity is the scourge that blackens the Earth, and Christian Grey… he's the expediting force. He's the kind of man that can make you breathe only for him and then choke the life from you with a hand of deceit and depravity.

He knows how much I loved my mom.

He knows how I woke up with tears streaming down my face in the middle of the night.

He knows how I contemplated doing the… irrevocable, on my darkest days….

He knows it all.

And yet, he did this.

To me.

To us.

I can't breathe. I thought I knew all there was to know about betrayal, Autumn's bomb drop on top of my life was a pretty effective lesson. But it turns out that I knew shit. This… what I'm feeling now… _this_ is betrayal. Or is it? If you never really knew a person in the first place, is it still betrayal when they take your life and drain all the color out of it, leaving it nothing more than plains of gray?

I don't know.

I don't know anything anymore.

I don't know what he could have possibly been thinking, how he could _ever_ have thought that I would _rather_ he be the one who took my mom from me than the one who fooled around on me. A crappy childhood and abusive adolescence can only account for an excuse for so much. I wrote so much of his shit off as being the natural consequences of his troubled past, but _this?_ No fucking way, no fucking how.

This is something else.

This is perverse, it's deranged, it's… Jack.

Jack.

Hyde.

My boss.

Staring at me, mouth moving, eyes orbed with concern.

I'm at work, at my new job, where my subconscious brought me. I had the day booked off, I did not foresee my mom's anniversary working out this way. I'm in the office, the reception area. It's empty, save for Jack. It's lunchtime, he takes a later one. He's still talking, but I don't hear a word. His mouth is moving faster and faster as he drops a stack of manuscripts on the coffee table and moves slowly towards me, brows raised in bewilderment.

I stagger backwards.

He immediately halts and hold his hands up in a show of surrender.

I blink, owlishly, I think.

Why am I here?

Why did I come here?

Where else do I have to go?

Home, to an empty and ratty apartment, that shrieks of my loneliness?

No.

Here, with the new boss that now almost certainly thinks I'm a complete psycho?

Apparently so.

The bubble bursts and sprays its foamy calamity all over the soft furnishings. The bubble has encased me since I saw… _him,_ at the cemetery. It was a bubble of indescribable pain and insurmountable disbelief. It was the worst bubble I have ever been in, excepting the bubble that bloomed around me when I found about my mom. And like then, the feeling when the bubble bursts is somehow… worse than the bubble itself. It's a pain so all-consuming and everlasting that there can be only one word for it.

 _Reality._

And when it hits…

It _hits._

I hear my gasp of pain and I feel my fresh and salty tears flow down my cheeks. Jack goes from astonished to downright horrified as he watches the freak show reach its climax. My entire body heaves and buckles under the onslaught of the unthinkable and the untenable. _Christian,_ my life and light… once a philanderer and a liar, now the one person that has caused me the most pain in the entire course of my life.

And irony upon all ironies, my mom would have loved him.

She would have dubbed him "a catch."

Well, he's the one catch I wish I'd never made.

Through the waterfall of my misery, I see Jack approach with caution reverberating in his soft footsteps. This time, I don't stagger backwards, I don't move at all. Even as his warm torso halts in front of mine and his muscular arm moves to softly settle over my shoulders, I remain stock still, stationary. He wraps me in his arms and a tiny sprinkle of comfort rains down on my head. I haven't been held by anyone in such a long time…

The human touch, it's a powerful thing.

I don't mean to do it, it sure as shit isn't living up to the image of a young, professional woman, but I do it. I allow my muscles, taut with misery, to loosen in his grasp and my head to drop forwards to rest against his chest. He's so warm, he's so _present._ He's murmuring something and there's soft concern in his every syllable, but I don't answer him, because I can't decipher the words. Words are too much right now. His hand moves to card gently through my hair and I know he's murmuring phrases of well-intentioned comfort.

What he doesn't know, is that I can never again be comforted.

But I let him try.

I let him try, because I'm tired of trying myself.

I'm tired of trying to pretend that I'm whole, when it couldn't be further from reality. Because I have finally accepted a singular and incontrovertible truth.

I am broken.

 _I don't know how I ended up here…._

My heart is hammering in my chest. I have broken another promise; her cell is being tracked, a live feed streaming into mine. I need to talk to her, I _have_ to talk to her. To explain, to tell her the things that I now only know myself. I didn't call the cops, and that fact both relieves and sickens me with every mile Taylor speeds through. She's at FinePrint Publishing, a pretty new publishing house. She must work there.

Why would she go there?

What's there for her?

What would make her head there after the most earth shattering news?

Elena's words are ringing in my ears and I want to wrench them from my head and throw them out the godamned window. Her sickness knows no bounds, she's still using Anastasia against me, pointing out that she'll never know the truth from my lips if I call the cops and start a shitstorm that I can't handle. I can't prove that Elena was driving the car and she sure as shit isn't going to admit it, so calling the cops isn't an option right now. She thinks she's won, but the minute I can find the time, my security team is going to receive the assignment of their lives. I don't care what it takes, how much it costs, or who has to be paid off… I want _proof._ I want something to take to the police. Until then, I can't even _deal_ with the revelations that spilled from her diseased lips. But, I am going to have to confront reality eventually, and the reality is… I've been living a lie.

For _years._

I've been waking up in cold sweats, suffering with night terrors… for years.

And all for a lie, a fabrication, a deceit that I can't yet even fathom.

I wasn't driving the car that killed Carla Adams.

I am not a murderer.

I did not take the life of another, I did not kill Anastasia's mother.

I should feel relieved, I should be shouting this revelation from the rooftops, but I don't and I'm not. Ana thinks I made the whole thing up to cover for my non-affair with Autumn. She thinks that I am capable of using the death of her mom to my own ends, to justify my non-existent screwing around. How can I ever convince her otherwise when I am en route to her side with a _different_ story?

 _Hey, Ana, I killed your mom and got close to you to salve my guilt._

Scratch that.

 _Hey, Ana, turns out… I didn't kill your mom and it was actually my ex-domme who mowed her down and left her for dead, I was just the fall guy… but hey, can we let bygones be bygones and start over?_

Oh my fucking _god,_ how did I end up here?

How did my life get this fucking complicated, this painful?

The car suddenly screeches to a halt and Taylor's voice uncharacteristically barks out in emphatic haste.

"We're here, sir."

There is no time for cowardice, there is no time for thinking.

There is only time for doing.

A horn blares out, followed by some asshole's colourful description of my eyesight as I barrel from the car and race across the crowded street. FinePrint Publishing is large and shiny and glares down at me with stony disapproval as I sprint to its doors. Anastasia is in there somewhere; her cell says so. She's within my grasp, within my reach. I just have to make her _see,_ I just have to sit her down and go from A to Z without drawing breath. She only has fragments of information, some true and some untrue, and she needs the full, clean picture.

She needs to know that I truly believed I killed her mother.

She needs to know that I truly had no choice but to get to know her.

She needs to know I've berated myself on an hourly basis ever since.

She needs to know that I never laid a hand on Autumn fucking Spector.

She needs to know it was all a con, a sham, a ploy.

She needs to know that I was weak, a coward, but not unfaithful.

She needs to know that until today, I _was_ the murderer of Carla Adams.

She needs to know that as of today, I am _not_ the murderer of Carla Adams.

She needs to know that she is the only thing that matters.

She needs to know…

She needs to….

A stitch forms in my chest as I push my body harder than ever before. My heart pumps air instead of blood as my feet barely beat off the sidewalk. I have to get to her before fate or some other such bullshit gets in the way. I am done with the ghosts of the past, both true and untrue, getting in between us. I was never a fan of the complete and utter truth, but right now, its my only hope. And I'm clinging to it, like a fucking drowning man to a life raft and then some. The glass doors shimmer in the afternoon sun as I draw close, panting, sweat blooming at my temples. She's close, I can feel her presence, like we're chemically co-dependant.

My palms squelch on the glass as I shove the doors roughly open.

My heart, that was working so hard to sustain me, stops.

My mouth, that was working so hard to prepare my speech, drops.

My world, that was hanging on by the thinnest of threads, falls into nothingness.

She's close, alright, she's closer than close.

But not to me.

She's in the arms of another, she's weeping in the arms of another. She's being held tight… by another, by another who's looking right at me over her mahogany head… who's grinning a satanic grin as he moves a hand up and done her unknowing and unseeing back.

It's Jack.

Jack.

Hyde.

My former, deranged and dangerous, foster-brother.

 _Fuck._

….


	7. Chapter 7

"Get your filthy fucking hands off her before I rip your godamned head off!"

Anastasia spins in his arms, rotating towards me in shock before a cloud of contempt storms across her face. Hidden from her view, Jack flashes me a smug smile, reading the situation with the lightning pace his sick mind has always operated under. He's perverse, psychotic and dangerous… but he is, undoubtedly, oh so _very_ clever. I've had a few scathing letters from this prick over these years, opened only to sneer at and then systematically destroyed. Taylor did a cursory sweep of his life a few years back and reported to me that he was no real threat, just a whack job who was at that time, unemployed but well educated.

I see it in his cold eyes and feel a shudder rip through my spine.

He despises me.

Loathes what I've become.

Loathes what he hasn't become.

"What are you doing here, Christian? You obviously tracked my cell to find me, another broken promise in a long list. What do you think turning up here is going to achieve?"

Of all the things in life that have wounded me, her voice is the most weaponised.

The coldness in her tone is earth shattering and I can't help but die a little inside.

"Anastasia, please. You have to listen to me. There's so much you don't know, fuck, there's so much that I don't know but you have to give me the chance to explain… it's…. it's all wrong. Everything you think, everything I thought. Please, give me the chance to explain it to you."

My voice is desperate.

And I don't care, for the first time, I don't care how I project myself.

She has always been my greatest weakness and my strongest strength.

"Leave," she whispers, and I see the chasm of agony that I've caused her in her dulled blue eyes. She's not sparking like she used to and another gut wrenching spasm of agony erupts within me. "I don't want to see you, not here, not anywhere. I don't want to hear from you, ever again. This is my place of work and you're not welcome. _Leave."_

She hisses the last word and Jack, fucking _Jack,_ places a sympathetic hand on her shoulder that she _doesn't_ remove and smiles his sick smile at me, letting me know that he is inches away from stealing the only joy I've ever known.

The snarl tears from me before I can prevent it.

Her shriek is lost to me as I, ensuring not to even brush off her, storm to where they stand and rip his fucking claw from her precious skin and send him careering backwards with a jaw-crunching punch. He tumbles to the ground with a pleasing thump and a cheering groan of pain, trying to stem the violent flow of blood as it squirts from his nose. Ana's small hand pounds my back as I move forwards, hatred in my heart, to finish the job and her touch, her seismic touch, has me halting in my steps.

I turn to face her and the loathing in her face ages me thirty years.

"Why are you doing this to me?" she whispers, tears shimmering unshed in her eyes. "You've devastated my personal life to a point where it's beyond any repair, but you're not satisfied with that are you? Now you're here to decimate my professional life. What is _wrong_ with you? How sick _are_ you? Jack has never done anything to you! He's my boss, he's-"

"My former foster brother, Ana. Jack and I were in a foster home together and he's hated me since the time we were children. He's dangerous, provably psychotic and will stop at nothing to exploit any opportunity to hurt me. He's written hate mail to me over the years, on and off again, and the depths of his loathing for me… they're unprecedented. His only interest in you is to harm me. He may not have known who you were when you first came here, but he sure as shit knows now and I will _not_ let him harm you in some sick ploy to get to me. I _won't."_

Her mouth drops open and I am gripped by an impossible sadness.

What have I done to this beautiful girl?

To my Ana?

I've dropped nothing but bombshell after bombshell into her life and far from running for her life, she always remained behind to rebuild our life together after the wreckage, brick by brick from the rubble of my fucked-up existence. She looks from a staggering to his feet Jack and to me and I can sense that she believes me, and the relief is overwhelming. Her tired lips move soundlessly for a moment, as she gazes between the two of us, before a small voice drops from her rosebud mouth.

"Is this true, Jack?"

Her voice is cold again.

Business-like.

Devoid of any emotion.

He pulls himself completely upright, using the reception desk for support and wiping the last trails of blood from his nose, nods curtly. What else can he do? He knows I can prove what I'm saying in mere minutes. Despite my mind-numbing flaws, I am still a man of considerable means and he knows I'd move mountains to prove the truth of my words if I thought it would get Ana out from under his poisonous grasp.

She nods slowly, and I see her wither a little internally.

"I see," she says quietly. "Then, please accept this altercation as my formal notice to quit, with immediate effect. I am no longer willing, in any sense, to continue on as a pawn in the sick, twisted chess game of Christian Trevelyan-Grey and associates."

Her voice breaks on her last syllable and she turns to leave.

Turns to run.

I cannot let that happen. There are some moments that are seemingly insignificant in life, but yet, they are everything. This is such a moment. I know, I don't know how I know, but I _know_ that if I let her leave now, she's lost to me forever. Panic seizes me in a clamp of calamity. Terror paralyzes me. I cannot lose her. Not without her knowing what I'm not and who I really am. Jack doesn't try and halt her gait as she stalks to the door and I linger behind her only long enough to turn to him and whisper in a voice that I don't recognize as my own.

"This isn't over Hyde, you bastard. Your life is no longer your own. Believe that."

He stares back at me with the same blankness that creeped the fuck out of me as a kid and I turn my back on him and all the associated memories that go with him, and unashamedly sprint after Ana's retreating back. I don't care if I have to send a singing quartet, scrawl the truth on the banner of a blimp or take over every news outlet in the country.

 _She has to learn the truth._

She's striding down the sidewalk at a furious pace. I don't see, but I can sense Taylor gliding alongside me as I run to catch up. She snarls as I emerge beside her, but I don't care.

"Ana. Please, _please,_ have one coffee with me so I can explain everything."

She practically combusts with well-earned rage.

" _Coffee?_ Are you fucking completely past the bridge of sanity?"

I deserved that.

"Anastasia, you don't understand. There's so much that you don't know. I got it wrong, I got it about as wrong as wrong can be and I am so, so sorry. But there are some facts that I believed for a long time to be true, and I've just learned that they're _not._ Please, Ana, let me tell you the full story. If you do, if you just listen to what I have to say and then decide that you never, ever want to see me again… then I'll respect that. I give you my word, I'll respect it. I'll disappear from your life and you will never, ever have to see or hear from me again. Ever."

There's desperation in my every syllable.

And I don't care.

She has to give me a chance to explain.

 _She has to._

But what if she doesn't?

I shove that thought down, I don't have time for that kind of shit right now.

"I don't have to see or hear from you ever again as it is," she snarls, "That's what restraining orders are for. You know any good lawyers? I think I'm in need of their services."

She doesn't stop power walking, so I don't have the time to lick my wounds.

"I will give you the number of the best attorney in town. I'll give you whatever you want if you'll _please…_ just listen to me. Just hear me out, for the sake of what we were. Ana, for the sake of what we had, please listen to what I have to say…"

She stops.

I practically fall over my feet at the abrupt change in pace.

Taylor is still unseen, but I can feel him.

"There's nothing you can ever say that will make me _not_ regret ever laying eyes on you," she says quietly, looking at me disarmingly straight in the eye. "You were everything to me, Christian. You were my whole life, my whole world. And you betrayed me in the most inhumane of ways. You fucked another woman, you had an affair with another woman, and you know what the worst part is? I can nearly get over that. I can nearly forget about you and move on. Because you're a fucking man, Christian, and that's what you do. I can chalk it up to experience and try to move on. But… today? What you did today? _Lying about the death of my mother to cover up your two-timing ways?"_

She takes a step back on the quiet sidewalk and shakes her head.

"There can be no understanding, there can be no forgiveness. _Ever."_

She turns to walk away and before I know what I'm doing, my arm shoots out and my hand grasps her wrist, not painfully, but tightly. I gaze into her eyes and feel an impossible pain bloom where my soul should be. I didn't have time to plan how I would tell her, but I don't think telling her on a sidewalk was ever a subconscious option. But needs fucking must.

"Anastasia. I never fucked Autumn, I never had an affair with her. I never touched her or allowed her to touch me. I was being blackmailed. She was threatening me, and I'm not fucking proud of it, but I buckled under her threats. Because her threats were hovering above the one person I love in the world, like an axe. Her threats were hovering over _you,_ Anastasia. I wasn't lying to you today in the cemetery. I truly and honestly believed that, on that night, years ago, I was the one who drunkenly took your mother's life. I've just learned today, an hour ago, that I wasn't. It was Elena. It was Elena driving the car. She drugged me before hand so that she could take twenty percent of my company that I had previously refused to hand over. She was driving us home after getting what she wanted when she crashed into your mother's car. I was in the passenger's seat and out for the count. She saw her chance. She switched us, and waited for me to wake up behind the driver's side and take in what I'd supposedly done."

I gulp down a huge intake of air.

"I couldn't believe what I was seeing. She told me to go, that there was nothing we could do for the woman in the car and that my life would be over if the cops came and breathalysed me. So, I did, I left. I knew… I knew Carla was dead. I could see her, she was beyond any help. We drove away and months and months later, I was still seeing your mother's face in my dreams every night, and the morning after one of those dreams… you fell into my office. And I knew straight away who you were, who you were born to. You are, in character, like Ray… but in appearance, you are your mother's daughter. I was stricken. It was like the gods were punishing me, or toying with me, or both."

She's staring like I've never seen anyone stare before.

"I was drawn to you. I was compelled by you. I had to get to know you better, I had to see how the daughter of the woman I believed that I had killed, was faring in life without her mother. I… cowardly thought that, if I could just help _you,_ then maybe Carla's death wouldn't be so… without meaning. I never intended to fall in love with you, Anastasia. I didn't believe myself capable, it was never a thought that I ever had. I didn't know what love was until you. And then, the further I fell in love with you and you I, the more terrified I became. I resolved time and time again to tell you who I was, what I'd done. But I fell at the finishing line every single time, because I knew that once I told you everything, you would walk away from me and the pain of that knowledge paralyzed me."

A father and son argue about ice-cream as they stroll past us.

Oblivious.

"As the days, weeks and years passed us by and the thoughts of losing you became more and more untenable, intolerable… I convinced myself that you were never meant to know. That we were meant to be and that telling you would only cause both of us pain. I could never bring your mother back, but I could make her daughter happy, make sure she was loved and protected. I reasoned with myself that that was the better trade, the better option. That your mother would have wanted you to be happy. I was a coward, Anastasia, a most disgusting coward. I told myself that this would be the only thing I ever kept from you, and it was…"

I feel my insides glaze over with ice.

"Until Autumn came into our lives. She was there that night, Ana. She saw me behind the driver's side of the car that crashed into Carla's. But she either didn't care or couldn't be sure of my identity until… until you arranged for her to tune my piano. She knew then for sure who I was, who you were, and what I had done. She is a cold hearted and conniving tramp, but she is not unintelligent. She saw her opportunity and she took it. She threatened that, unless I declared to the world that she was my love interest and allowed her to amass all the social and monetary benefits that go with that title, she would reveal everything. She would tell _you_ everything. I couldn't bear the thoughts… the idea that you would find out after so long… so I thought… I thought the idea of my having an affair would be an easier pill to swallow than the truth…"

Shame floods my face and my heart.

"I was a fool, Anastasia," I whisper. "I was weak and spineless. My love for you consumed me and nothing else mattered but protecting you from a truth that you should never have had to hear. But now I know that said truth is a _lie_ and that all this… all this _pain…_ has been for nothing, to no end. I didn't kill your mom, Ana. But I swear to you that I thought I did, I really thought I did and I've lived with that crushing guilt for years. And you were the only salve to that guilt. You were the light that came out of that unbearable darkness. What I've done is stupid, cowardly and unforgivable… but, please, you have to know I did it all for you, for us, for love…"

I close my eyes.

"And I am so, so _sorry,_ Anastasia. You will never know how sorry I am, for everything, for all of it. I can explain better if you'll let me, but please not here, not in the middle of the street. Please, Ana, one coffee and then you never have to see me again, I promise."

I open them slowly and her face, her beautiful face, is a mask of oceanic blankness. She stares at me and stares and stares some more. I am desperate to know what she's thinking, desperate to know how she's feeling. Her wrist is still in my hand and the touch of her soft, supple skin is like a veritable high. She's real, she was never a figment of my imagination. She feels the same, she smells the same… but she's not the same. She doesn't vibrate with that youthful zest for life, her eyes don't reflect my image with the same adoration that used to ooze from them and her bones are a little too close to the surface of her skin for comfort. She's a shadow of herself, and yet, she's survived better than I ever could if the situations were reversed.

Not that Anastasia could ever do to me as I've done to her. She would never so weak, so spineless or so cruel. She would have just told me, scratch that, she would never have been so fucking selfish and stupid as to get involved with me in the first place. God, how could I have fucked this up so badly. This, the only good thing I ever had or ever will have, ruined. Because of my own fucking spineless stupidity.

Her lips part and I brace myself.

Physically.

Mentally.

I prepare myself to have what's left of my heart ripped from my body through the tones of her sweet, sweet voice.

She licks her lips and takes a deep breath as my heart hammers painfully.

"One coffee."

…


	8. Chapter 8

She's stirring her Earl Grey in a silent state of stale shock.

This is my one opportunity to plead my case, to explain how I did all the wrong things for all the wrong reasons all to end up at the right place… and I'm coming up empty. Like a vacant shell. The coffee burns my skin as I wrap my hands around my mug. I open my mouth and close it in rapid succession, at a most painful loss. Her beauty sears me like a white-hot poker. Her hair is tumbling about her shoulders as she stares down at the table, completely and utterly reeling from the day's shocks and betrayals.

I am responsible for the deadened light in her eyes.

I did that to her.

I always knew that I was the most despicable of beasts, but this… is a new low.

Even for me.

"Ana, I know this is a lot to take in and I know that-"

"You know nothing."

It's her voice. It's the same voice she's always had and yet, it's not her voice and it's not the same voice she's always had. Never have I heard such a glacial tinge to her sweet tones. Never have I heard such cold color her words. This is not the Anastasia Steele that came into the world, unencumbered by the malignancy that is me. This is the Anastasia Steele that has had no choice but to harden, to toughen her barriers as a direct defensive response to the illness that is Christian Grey.

I will never, if I live for a hundred lifetimes, forgive myself for that.

"You know nothing," she repeats in a soul-crushing hollow tone of despair, looking me square in the eye with those cold blue eyes that I still can't reconcile as being her previously sparkling blue pools of light. "You don't know about the mornings after she died that Kate had to physically drag me out of bed and into the shower, you don't know how she had to force-feed me my meals. You don't know about the sleeping pills I was stashing, the collection I was amassing. You don't know the thoughts I thought, the plans I planned. You don't know the darkness I lived in, for months and months. You don't know the pain of losing a mother who actually knew how to be a mother. You know _nothing."_

A vocal knife is ten times sharper than the most jagged of serrated blades.

Despair threatens to drown me.

She's my only life jacket, but she's ejecting me with every passing second.

"I'm so sorry for what you went through, Ana. No words can ever explain how sorry I am. If I could trade in everything I have and everything I ever could have for your mother's life, I'd do it in a heartbeat. But I can't. I can't bring her back and I can't take back the events that have led us to this moment. You have no idea how much I wish I could…"

Her hand trembles as it struggles to cup her tea.

"You think you can just sit there and tell me you're sorry and I'll tremble at the knees for you? You think you can just… just trot out one of your silver-tongued speeches and I'll forget everything I've learned about you today?" She shakes her head, paler than pale, and unshed tears of rage pool in her eyes. "I still can't process it. Yesterday, I was the jilted girlfriend of Christian Grey, the unknowing side chick to his main chick. Today, I find I was never anything more than the unwitting therapy for the sickest, most despicable human being I have ever met. I sobbed for my dead mother in your arms and you never said a word. How could I have known I was lying with a monster?"

She holds up her hand as I open my mouth to say… I have no idea.

"Don't. There is no answer, no justification you could give that would ever make what you did even a fraction less depraved. You pursued me, you made me fall in love with you. You stood by as my world became you, my sun became you and the orbit in between… it was all you. You let me live and breathe for you. You were my salvation to the devastation you knew more about than I did, and you lied to me every second of every day about it for… for _years._ How can one human being do that to another? How can someone pretend to be in love with someone else just so that they can feel better about the sickest skeletons in their closet?"

My ribs splinter as the remnants of my exploding heart rip right through them.

"I never once pretended to love you, Anastasia. My love for you is the only true and pure thing I've ever had or ever done. Whether you can believe anything I say… I don't know… but if you can, believe that. I love you. I love you more than anything in this world and twice over. I never intended to fall in love with you, I never knew I could, but I did. Our circumstances of meeting are something I'll be ashamed of until my dying day… but I can't bring myself to say that I regret my decision to pursue you… I can only regret that I didn't have the stones to be honest with you… to tell you the truth… back when I should have."

The swallow that pulsates through my throat is as sharp as a razor blade.

"And that I didn't have the strength to do the right thing…"

Her eyes give me nothing.

Her face gives me nothing.

She is, for the first time that I can ever remember, emotionless.

"Me too."

This isn't going well.

Did I really expect anything else?

I don't know.

I don't recognize myself or my life anymore.

I haven't done since fucking Autumn Spector came into the picture.

"Will you testify?"

My coffee mug slips and scalds my skin with piping hot coffee.

"Will I… what? Testify? What do you-"

"Don't you _dare_ ask me what I mean you son-of-a-bitch. According to you, your kiddie-fiddling dominatrix of a business partner is the fucking parasite that _killed_ my _mother._ I want her behind bars and I want her there yesterday. I am going straight to the police, to the press, to the fucking Pope if I have to. My mom… was a beautiful, scatter-brained woman who never did a wrong to anyone. She was innocent, she was pure, and she was mowed down in her prime by your perverted bitch troll. I want the world to know who killed Carla Adams. I want that tramp rotting in the dirtiest, darkest prison in this country and if you mean a single word of what you just said, you will tell the police everything you know."

My mouth runs dry.

My heart forgets to beat, its chambers lying idle.

The waitress passes me by in an odd, ultrasonic blur of efficiency.

But my mouth, operating on some sort of back up generator, rises to the occasion.

"I will. I will do whatever you want, whatever you need. Name it and it's done."

She eyes me warily.

"How can I trust you? How can I believe you'll do as you say you will?"

I slip a hand into my jacket pocket and retrieve my cell. Pressing a well-used speed dial, I wait for the split second it takes for Ros to pick up the call.

"Hey, Christian. Where the hell have you been? You know full well that Monaco was on the-"

"Shut up, Ros. Shut up and listen. I need you to get the lawyers in. The best we have. They're going to need to liaise with the DA's office and the police department in the prosecution of a cold case, a fatal RTA. I will be available when they need me to be, day or night. I want them in the boardroom by the end of business today where I will brief them. Organize for the highest-ranking Seattle police officer to be in attendance and the highest-ranking representative of the DA's office available. I'll explain more when I see you. I'll be there by four-thirty. Make sure the meeting is in full swing by then. I don't care how you do it, just make it happen."

Her sharp intake of breath is lost to me mid-inhale.

I jab the hang-up button and lay the cell down on the shiny table.

"I mean what I say, Ana. I'm done with being a coward and I'm done running from that night. It's never left me. I see your mom every morning and every night. I see her eyes. I see the car. Not a day has passed since that night that I don't wish I could go back in time and make sure we got a cab. But I can't. I can't change the past, no matter how much I want to. But I can change the present. I will do whatever I can to ensure Elena pays the price for what she has done… and that I do too."

She raises a brow.

"You do too?"

I blink, confused.

Doesn't she realize what I've done?

"Ana, I obstructed justice. I've _been_ obstructing justice for years now. I allowed the scene to be cleaned up in an attempt to evade arrest for something I genuinely believed I had done. When the police called for witnesses, I didn't come forward and hand myself in. I knew that the car we had been driving that night was already scrapped and shipped to some hellhole overseas, and I allowed the police to continue searching for it anyway. I didn't kill your mom, Ana, but I didn't do what I should have done either. I didn't hand myself in, and as we sit here, I still haven't handed Elena in…"

I take a deep breath and admit the truth I've been hiding from for so long.

"I deserve to be punished just as much as she does."

Surprise seems to flit across her face before it hardens into a mask that she should never have to wear.

"Yes. You do."

I incline my head in agreement.

There can be no defense.

I know it.

She knows it.

And soon, the world will know it too.

The coldness in her eyes has well and truly returned and I don't think I'll ever be able to erase the emergence of icebergs where once there was sunshine. Silence settles between us and a sense of awkwardness I never before could have imagined between she and I springs up into an impenetrable barrier. I never saw it ending this way and therein lies my greatest, deepest sense of shame. If Autumn had never come into the scene and blackmailed me as she had, would Ana and I be having this conversation right now?

Would I have told her the truth without my back against the wall?

I don't think so.

I may be denouncing my cowardly ways right now, but the reality seems starker ever day.

Maybe I wasn't being a coward.

Maybe I _am_ a coward.

"I can never forgive you," she suddenly whispers and gone is her vehemence and passion for justice, leaving in its wake a beautiful, broken girl. "You were my everything, Christian. I thought you were the universe's way of righting a wrong. It took my mom and it gave me you. I thought you were heaven sent, that you were the answer to all my pain. But you were never the answer. You were the cause. The more I think about it, the sicker it becomes. I woke up beside you and went to sleep beside you for _years._ All that time… all those hours… and you never said a thing. You may not have killed Carla Adams, but you thought you did and you made a home with her daughter anyway. You let me build a life with you that was cemented on a foundation of lies and deception… and you hid it all behind a handsome face and a tortured past."

She rises from the table and grabs her purse with anguish etched onto her face.

"If I don't receive a call from either the police department or the DA's office confirming that your conversation with Ros isn't just another of your lies and your twisted plans… I'll report this myself. My mother was my first best friend and my fiercest protector. She mightn't have been perfect, and she mightn't have been the best mom in the world… but she was _my_ mom, Christian. She was my _mom._ And if it weren't for you and all the shit that goes with you, she'd still be here today, and I might be happily settled with a decent, truthful man who would love me for who I am, and not because of some sick, secret life. You broke my heart in a way that I will never be able to put into words. Half of me died the day my mom did, and the other half only survived because I found you… and now, I have nothing. I'm as dead in mind as my mother is in body and you're the common denominator."

She turns to leave and my earth shatters into the finest dust.

"Outside of whatever needs to be done to make sure you and that whore pay for what happened to my mother, I never want to see you again."

She throws her parting comments over her shoulder like a lethal grenade.

"You're as dead to me as my mom is."

The door tinkles open, a musical soundtrack to her staccato murmuring.

"Except, I'll never cry at night for you."

…..

A/N: Work through the angst people, work through it!

Inks x


	9. Chapter 9

The police station reeks; an intermingling stench of alcohol and regret.

The never-ending stream of vibration in my pocket signals Elena's increasing desperation. Taylor is supposed to be sitting on her and as of yet, she's not left her home. She doesn't know where I am, if she did, she'd sure as shit be en route. But she suspects. She would have convinced herself when I left that I didn't mean what I said and that I'd eventually calm down and sweep everything back under the rug, but that serenity is wearing off with every call I refuse to pick up. I need to get this done before she can sink her claws in.

A bored cop looks up from the reception desk as I advance.

I see him appraise my expensive clothes and roll his eyes in disdain.

Prick.

"My name is Christian Grey and I need to speak to someone about a fatal RTA that took place a number of years ago, the victim's name was Carla Adams and she was killed at the scene."

I swallow a throatful of razor blades and close my eyes for a fraction of a second.

"I need to make a confession."

He sighs. Loudly. A substantial amount of stubble coats his chin and he has the air of a man who's checked out of life a long time ago. He's about all of five years older than me and he glares in my direction like I'm an irritating teenager, here to disrupt his day on nothing more than a moronic dare or bet. My teeth grind together as we stare unblinkingly at each other. It's hard for me to even admit this to myself… but the truth is the truth.

I'm scared shitless.

I'm about to confess to my most heinous secret and once I do, there's no taking it back.

Ever.

"Listen, I don't have time for stalling," I snap. "I need to see someone at the appropriate level to discuss the as of yet, unsolved hit and run case that resulted in the death of one Carla Adams. So why don't you pick up your phone and call someone before I pick up mine and make your life a living hell." His nostrils flare into an impressive snort, but his pudgy hand twitches towards the desk phone to his right. His beady little eyes don't leave mine as I clutch the reception desk and try to keep from spinning the hell out from reality.

I feel… weird.

Lightheaded.

"Hey, Jeffers? You handled a RTA couple of years back, victim by the name of Carla Adams? Cos' I got a Christian Grey out at reception that is _demanding_ to see someone about that case. You got a few minutes to spare?"

He nods unnecessarily and hangs up with a snap.

"Detective Jeffers will be out in a moment… if you would be so _kind_ as to take a seat and wait, he'll call on you when he's ready."

I open my mouth, but he slides the frosted glass window closed with a crack.

Fucking dickhead.

Spinning on my heel, I try to ignore my hammering heart as I throw myself down on a chair in the waiting area and try to ignore the grime that surrounds me. All too soon, I will be surrounded by nothing but grime and I'm a firm believer in learning to adapt to an impending scenario as soon as is possible. Two drunks are hauled through the station doors by three panting beat cops and the momentary chaos distracts my mind from the hell its being pickled in for just a second.

"Christian Grey, is it?"

I look up and find a tall, balding man staring down at me.

He's as unimpressed as his reception-based colleague, if not more so.

I stand and offer my hand.

He ignores it.

Another fucking dickhead.

Man…. I feel dizzy as shit.

"Yes, it is. And I'm here in relation to the fatal RTA that claimed the life of one Carla Adams. I have pertinent information to the case and it's absolutely imperative that you listen to me. Is there somewhere private we can talk? It's rather… sensitive in nature."

The frosted window slides open and the desk jockey behind it shares a snarky look with his asshole colleague, before both of them turn irritated gazes back upon me and sigh a collective breath of irritation. My hackles begin to raise and my hands curl into fists at my sides. What the fuck is their problem? They have no idea what I'm about to say and they're acting as though I'm disrupting their precious day with annoying information about the unsolved death of an innocent woman.

A loving mother.

My throat tightens as I hear Ana's words ringing in my ears.

 _You're as dead to me as my mom is…_

 _Except, I'll never cry at night for you…_

This is my last chance to turn on my heel, utter my apologies and bolt from this station. This is my last chance to cling onto life as I know it. But life as I know it is no life at all. It hasn't been… not since Ana left, not since I forced her away through lies upon lies and cowardice upon cowardice. As Jeffers merely sneers at me in answer, I close my eyes and run through the events that led me here in a sick montage of regret and misery.

 _The crash…_

 _Carla's open and lifeless eyes as death claimed her…_

 _Ana's entrance into my life… my pursuance of her, my ill-fated obsession…_

 _My love for her, so unexpected and all consuming…_

 _The arrival of Autumn, the manipulations of Elena…_

 _The ruination of my life, all traceable back to that split-second crash…_

I clear my throat and lay it out for the world to see.

"Detective Jeffers, the car that killed Carla Adams belonged to me. It was driven by a former friend and business acquaintance of mine, Elena Lincoln. However, until… very recently, I truly believed that I was the one that caused the crash through driving under the influence. But I wasn't. Elena Lincoln had previously drugged me in an attempt to source funds from my business and upon colliding with Carla Adams' car, switched my unconscious body for hers in the driving seat. When I woke up, I was staring at the wreckage of Carla's car and her dead body and thusly believed that I had been driving. I fled the scene, had the car scrapped and until this moment hid all knowledge and involvement in the accident from the authorities. I have, in short, spent years actively and inactively obstructing the course of justice and allowing the death of an innocent woman to go unanswered for. But it stops now, it stops here… today."

My tongue is as dry as the severest drought.

My cardiac health can only be described as borderline inhuman.

But a sense of freedom is beginning to stir in my gut.

No matter what the consequence… the truth is out there now.

It's _out there._

And so is my pulse. It races underneath my skin.

Is it normal to feel this… disembodied?

Detective Jeffers stares at me for the longest and yet shortest moment of my life, before turning with a raised brow to the asshole receptionist-come-cop. They share a silent conversation in their gaze and their body language, a conversation I am clearly not to be privy to. He gives an infinitesimal shake of his bald head, most likely undetectable to the masses, but not to me. I've made my fortune from reading people's most miniscule of tells and as a current of foreboding ripples through my body, I become convinced that there's something… off, about this meeting.

There's something I'm missing.

Something important.

His condescending tones are finally heard in some semblance of length.

But I feel as though I'm listening to them under water.

What the hell?

"You think this is a game, son? You think the death of an innocent lady, out minding her own damned business, is something to make light of? Cos let me tell you something for nothing, round here… we don't share that kind of sense of humor. Do we, Floyd?"

Floyd, the reception-come-cop, slash asshole shakes his head slowly.

"No sir, we sure as hell do not."

I feel my mouth swing open and indignation swell in my chest. These _bastards…_ what the hell are they talking about? What joke? Who the hell is joking? I shake my head, trying to clear the fog of confusion from my ears. This doesn't make any sense… I don't understand….

"Joking? Who said anything about a joke? Who the hell would joke about something like this? What the fuck is the matter with you people? I am here telling you, that I know what happened to Carla Adams. That I know exactly how she died, and who killed her. That I know exactly who's been hiding the truth for all these years. _Me. I'm the one who's been hiding the truth all these years."_

I pinch the bridge of my nose in irritation and feel an odd, disembodied sensation engulf me. I felt it in the car on the way over here and wrote it off as stress. But it's getting worse, pressing in from the corner of my eyes like a dark smog cloud, obscuring my vision and confusing my senses. I shake my head like a dog, trying to clear it, and failing miserably. Desperation colors my tone and for the first time in my life, I don't care about hiding it.

"I may not have killed her myself, but I might as well have done," I grunt, "Now, I've told you the truth and it's your job to act on it. I can give you the names and addresses of all the people involved in scrubbing and scrapping the car that collided with Carla's that night. I can give you the name of a witness, who until now has been blackmailing me to within an inch of my life, who saw what happened that night. This is no joke. This is about doing the right thing. It may be the right thing at the wrong time, but it's still the right thing."

Jesus Christ the fogginess is reaching epidemic levels.

Jeffers' face swims in and out of focus.

What the hell is the matter with me?

This can't just be a bodily reaction to intense stress, can it?

I've been intensely stressed before, and this… feeling… it never came.

Through the mist and disorientation, I can hear the screech of a fax machine.

"You got it through, Floyd?"

Jesus.

Why is his voice so far away? Why can't I hear properly, see properly?

 _Think properly…_

"Got it right here, sir."

I'm swaying on my feet now, barely holding it together. There's something wrong. Real and raw panic constricts me. There's something really fucking wrong with me. I barely make out the shape of Floyd's bulk lumbering out from behind the reception desk and over to his boss, handing him a sheet of ink splattered paper. Their noses nearly touch the sheet as they examine it, looks of exasperated satisfaction on their faces.

I stagger slightly.

Sweat streams down my back as I let out an involuntary gasp.

 _What is this?_

My eyelids flutter down without restraint and I battle to keep them open.

 _What is this?_

The tinkle of the main door's bell resonates in the entrance hall. I can't turn, I can't move… I can barely keep upright. I feel as though I'm under a tonne of setting cement, unable to help myself. I need a doctor… I need Taylor… I need _help._ I try and open my mouth, to scream for assistance, but my lips are sealed together as though sewn shut. Jeffers and Floyds' faces swim in and out of focus as a sharp pinch suddenly emanates from my right forearm.

My neck feels like splintering concrete as I slowly twist it downwards.

Before the blackness truly descends and male, muscular arms grasp me… I see it… I hear it.

Red talons.

Sharp, glossy and imbedded into my soft tissue.

"You see what I was saying on the phone, Detective Jeffers? The poor boy's undergoing a mental breakdown. His psychologist doesn't know what to make of him… and the drug use is new, of course, and very worrying. As you can see… he's heavily medicated as we speak, all prescription pills of course. They're the worst these days, aren't they? I'll just go on and take him home and you can rest assured that you both will be taken care of for your understanding… you do such fantastic work."

A pitiful whimper escapes me.

I try to stay awake, I beg myself to rip my lips apart.

But I cannot.

I'm drowning a slow death.

"Alright then," Jeffers grunts, "You go on and take him home… but you best make sure that this doesn't happen again… being Seattle's richest man doesn't give him the right to waste my time with these cock-and-bull stories, you understand?"

"Oh, of _course,_ Detective. I'll see to it that he never speaks such madness again. You have my word, I've known him since he was a child. We have an amazing relationship… I'll fix him right up."

Silence.

Dark, despairing silence.

Rough hands grasp me all the tighter.

"Alright then… you go on and have a good day, Mrs Lincoln."

…..

This updates recommendation is the amazing Little Treasures by 710. This story is one of my all-time favourites. It's beyond cute and precious, but all-consuming and thrilling at times too! You will not be sorry that you checked it out, trust me!

If you'd like sneak peek at the next chapter of Illusion, just leave a "sneak peek please" in a review and I'll pop it through to you via PM soon!

Till next time,

Inks x

…


	10. Chapter 10

"Miss Steele, I don't mean to be indelicate… but I don't give a damn about yours and Mr Grey's state of affairs right now! He deliberately stuck me on Mrs Lincoln and went off grid. Mr Grey is never somewhere that I don't know about. There's something off, something wrong and frankly… given everything he has done and would do for you, the least you can do is tell me what I'm dealing with, so I can find him!"

I don't think I've ever heard Taylor say so much in one sitting.

Or speak so vehemently.

He really cares about Christian… the poor fool.

I was once that same fool, to the same degree of poverty.

But not anymore.

"Taylor, trust me when I tell you that Mr Grey is more than capable of looking out for his own interests… no matter the cost. You don't have  
to be worried. He's a big boy. Now, if you don't mind, I'm kinda busy right now…"

He blocks the door with his right foot.

I stare at him in surprise bordering on shock.

Taylor?

"Miss Steele," he says quietly, "I have been working for Mr Grey for a long time and I look the other way in the case of his many… quirks, but when it comes to that poisonous… _bitch_ , Elena Lincoln, I'm not taking any chances. Wherever Mr Grey is, so is she. She slipped out the back entrance to her place, I couldn't cover both. I… call it instinct, call it whatever you want… but I know that Mr Grey is in trouble… and you are damned well going to help me find him."

His face softens, and his eyes take on a pleading hue.

"Please?"

I always had a soft spot for Taylor, he made Christian's insufferable security precautions slightly more bearable. That soft spot is still there. He didn't betray me in the sickest way possible, he's just someone who happens to be caught in the crossfire of the madness that is his master's universe. You'd think I'd be shocked that Taylor appears clueless as to Christian's smouldering secret. But I'm not. He wouldn't have trusted Taylor as much as he does now back then. He would've farmed out his dirty work to someone who would never know they were being hired by him.

"Taylor, please don't put me in this position."

"Miss Steele, look, I know that the man is flawed as all manner of hell. I know it, you know it, the whole world knows it. But he's a decent and good man under it all and if the roles were reversed, no matter what's going on between you two, he would help me to help you if I turned up at his door. He would move mountains to help you, and you know it."

The rusty tinge of blood coats my tongue as I bite viciously down on my lip.

It's not Taylor's fault that he's oblivious to Christian's depravity.

He hides it well.

So very well…

"There are some things that can't be overlooked, Taylor," I deflect quietly. "I'm sorry that you're anxious and that you think there's something wrong, but I can't help you. If Christian doesn't want you to know where he is, then I'm sure he has his reasons. But it's not my problem anymore… and if you knew what was good for you, you'd plan to make Christian not _your_ problem anymore. Trust me."

He stares at me silently for a long, hard moment.

"If not for him, Miss Steele… for me? Help him for me?"

Jesus Christ.

You know what?

Fuck it.

"He's probably at a police station," I inform him flatly. "Turns out, he's been sitting on a crime for a long, long time and the truth finally caught up to him and his sick, sordid past. He's probably spilling his guts to some detective who doesn't care about a meaningless statistic from years ago, in the pathetic hopes that it will show me that he's _sorry_ and that he is in fact, a human being. So there you have it. He's alive, safe and he'll live to lie another day. Can I please close my door and forget this conversation now?"

Confusion splatters across his face like a non-lidded banana smoothie.

 _"Huh?"_

I want to scream in his face.

I itch to slam the door in his face.

But I can't, I don't, I won't.

Because I understand his loyalty, Christian engenders that kind of undeserved, unreciprocated and unappreciated emotion in people. Until today, until the events of mere hours ago, I would have helped Taylor if he'd turned up at my door and I was still labouring under the delusion that Christian was merely fucking someone else. I would have dropped everything at the tortured glint in the usually stoic Taylor's eyes, with a gut-churning fear that something might have happened to the all-consuming Christian Grey. But now… without regret or reluctance, I subscribe to the _I don't give a fuck_ school of thought.

If Christian _isn't_ at the police station, the police will go to him.

Because one way or another, he is going to pay for what he's done.

Carla Adams' death is going to go unanswered for no more.

My mother, my hopelessly imperfectly perfect mother, deserves justice.

Elena Lincoln and Christian Grey took her from me.

And whether Taylor knows it or not, there's going to be hell to pay.

"You should go now," I instruct him monotonously. "Keep your cell on, I'm sure Mr Grey or someone will be contacting you soon. As for now, I need a little alone time so… goodbye, Taylor."

His hand juts out to keep the door open for the second time.

Now, I'm tempted to slam the door in his face _and_ on his damned hand.

"Miss Steele, I don't know what the hell you're talking about and I get the feeling that I don't want to know. I've spent years learning when and when not to speak and when it comes to… _Mrs Lincoln,_ I've learned that it's usually better to adopt the latter approach. But there's something different about this time, something off. She's planning something. She deliberately gave me the slip, she's not stupid, she knows I was sitting on her and now both she and Mr Grey and uncontactable. Please… you don't have to care about him, but you know what she is… what she's done…"

He takes a deep breath and pinches the bridge of his nose in agitation.

"She's a cancer," he eventually mutters, opening up his eyes slowly. "And whether Mr Grey is the worst bastard in the world or not, you know the hold she has over him. There's something wrong, dangerously wrong. I can feel it. Don't ask me how, I just can. And she's at the core of it. You want to hate him? Have at it. But please help me make sure that that… animal, isn't the reason something happens to him."

I never knew a human body could suffer so fiercely from fatigue.

Emotional and physical.

I slump in the doorway and feel tears of frustrated exhaustion pool in my eyes.

"You don't understand, Taylor," I whisper… "You just don't understand."

His face is a mask of bewilderment.

Christ, I just want him gone.

"How the hell do you expect me to help? If you can't find him, how do you expect me to track him down?"

He snaps into efficient Taylor mode.

"You said he was at a police station. Walk me through the last moments you spent with him… did he give any indication which station he was going to? What was your location during this last conversation? His state of mind was what?"

My eyes prickle with tiredness as my temples begin to throb.

My voice is a staccato monotone as I answer his queries one by one.

He drinks the information in like a man stranded in the Sahara.

"Ok… he was agitated, and you were within walking distance of…" he trails off, muttering to himself and consulting his cell as I stand in the doorway of my own home, unable to move, stricken with another part of Christian's life that I can't escape from. Any positive emotion I feel for Taylor is rapidly running out and anger is beginning to seep into the hole that's being left behind. As for Christian, I feel nothing. I feel an aching nothingness. All I care about is that the truth comes out and he and Mrs fucking Robinson rot where they belong.

Taylor or no Taylor.

This time, when I tell him to take a hike, he's gonna start trekking.

But my cell interrupts both my intentions and his fervent mutterings.

Like every other bodily function since Christian's… revelations, I act on auto-pilot.

Anything to stop myself from thinking, from feeling, from hyperventilating…

I don't recognize the number.

"Hello?"

"I'll be brief, Anastasia, time is the most consuming pressure right now. I'm sorry about what happened to your mother, really, I am. But I'm not about to go to prison for it and I'm not about to let my life go down in flames for the mere memory of a dead woman. Christian was important to me once… but now he's a liability. He's here with me now… and he's not looking so good. But you can change that. You agree to forget everything you've heard today. You agree to protect that agreement from now till Kingdom come to protect the life interest of the man we both loved. You agree to that and Christian will be safe and whole once more. What do you say?"

Elena.

Of course, of course it's Elena.

Of course she has Christian.

Of course he's not looking so good.

Of course she's going to use him as leverage to cover her own ass.

"You have Christian? Against his will?"

She pauses.

"In a manner of speaking, yes. He's… medicated, shall we say… but he can make a full recovery if you're willing to play ball, Anastasia."

Of course he's medicated.

Of course he can make a full recovery, but only if I'm willing to play ball.

Of course, of course, _of course…_

"Elena?"

I can hear her _come hither_ smile as Taylor's eyes grow borderline subhuman.

"Yes, Anastasia?"

Taylor's head snaps up and down in encouragement, his meaning clear.

 _Keep her talking, tell her what she wants to hear…_

I lick my lips and speak from the heart.

"You do whatever the hell you want with him, but both of you are going to jail _."_

Taylor spasms in front of me as I offer my parting comments.

In a voice so cruelly cold, I barely recognize it as my own.

"Thanks for the call."

….

If you'd like a sneak peak, just mention it in a review and I'll PM you shortly.

Today's recommendation is the new and exciting My Dominant, My Lover by Starglen. It's a fantastic reimagining of a highly divisive scene and I can't recommend it enough.

Inks x

…..


	11. Chapter 11

"What have you done?" Taylor demands in a low voice I've never heard him use before. His complexion is paling and a sheen of uncharacteristic sweat dampens his brow. "Miss Steele, what the _hell_ have you done? Who was on the other end of that line… do you know where Mr Grey is?"

He inches further towards me, dominating the doorstep.

My cell is loosely clutched in my palm. His eyes dart to it and before I can blink, he swoops down and in a flash, it is no longer in my hand but his. His fingers fly across the screen. He's hitting redial. With a heaving chest and a hand knotted in his sandy brown hair, he leans against the brickwork with a frenzy stirring in his eyes. Comprehension looms large, crashing down like a clap of thunder as the call connects on the other line. Clearly, Elena knows when she's being played and the call is disconnected faster than it was connected and Taylor's arm falls limply by his side.

"Elena Lincoln," he whispers, turning to face me with horror splayed across his cheeks. "She has him? Elena has Mr Grey, against his will?"

My blank expression appears to be answer enough.

"Jesus Christ, Ana!" he barks and an involuntary jump spasms through me. "What's the matter with you? Do you have any idea how unhinged that woman is, how depraved? Do you realize the lengths she will go to in order to secure what she wants, what she desires? And after all that you and Mr Grey have been through, after everything he did for you and you for him… this is how you act in _his_ time of need? What the hell am I missing?"

Fatigue.

It hits hard and it hits fast.

Instead of the rage that I expect to spring to the tip of my tongue, instead of the hatred I feel in my soul that I expect to spew forth into my words… tiredness, tiredness springs and spews forth. Slumping against the door, I feel wizened, ancient. My legs are limp and they are lame. Everything, every single, miserable bit of it… catches up to me and slams me into the chest with the force of an emotional tsunami. The anger dissipates like a fizzling flame in Taylor's eyes and he reaches out to catch me just in time.

His face swims in and out of focus as I struggle to blink away the reality.

"Miss Steele? _Miss Steele?"_

I hear a muttered _damnit_ before I am swept of my feet entirely.

Taylor is warm and smells fresh and clean. Christian… Christian was warm and smelt fresh and clean. An empty ache begins in the bottom of my stomach and claws its way upwards. My brain burns. I don't know what I think, know or believe anymore. Everything I ever thought and trusted… is gone, with nothing in the background to take its place. For the first time, an image of a bound and gagged Christian slithers into my brain and a small, tearless sob resonates in my throat.

I am laid gently on my sofa.

Taylor is calling for backup, but not for the police. He doesn't know what he knows either, but he knows it's best not to involve the authorities. He can sense it, appreciates the magnitude of the split between me and his boss. A glass of cold water, condensed droplets of moisture streaming down the outside rim, is set down in front of me. The one solitary tear that has managed to escape the prison of my unseeing eyes is gently wiped away as Taylor looms into focus, perching on the edge of my coffee table, his brain working overtime.

"Miss Steele," he murmurs softly, "I think we need to talk… don't you?"

My eyes slide slowly closed.

 _Talk…_

Too tired not to talk and too tired to talk, I am torn. But before I know it, my voice fills the room. Not my usual voice, but a recognisable shadow thereof nonetheless. Rather than have Taylor ask leading questions, I give a monotonous explanation of events. Of everything. Of learning of the supposed affair between Autumn and Christian, the implosion of my happy world to the lies that founded lies and the deceit that concreted deceit. How, just hours ago, I was cornered in a cemetery, on the anniversary of my mother's death by Christian. How he dropped a nuclear bomb on my exposed wounds. How I ran, how he found me. How he told of new revelations, how the nuclear bomb had been factually incorrect. How he had believed since before he met me that he had killed my mother… only to find… that Elena had framed him.

My voice peters out into a strained whisper at the final, miserable word.

Taylor, for the first time since I have known him, has his jaw hanging wide open.

"Holy shit," he whispers eventually, dumbstruck. "I knew something was off… something didn't make sense… especially Grace and Carrick… I never understood… _Jesus Christ."_

He leaps to his feet and begins an almost manic and yet controlled, pacing.

My mind fills with images of my mom, to the backtrack of Taylor's mutterings. The memories I have, always so pure and so clean… are infected. Elena's face lingers in the background of my mom gardening, of her rolling her eyes at my studious refusal to come out home for a relaxing girls trip. Christian's face reflects like a water image at the peripherals of my mind as my mom buys me my first bra, helps me try on my favorite prom dress. Hot, scalding tears form in my eyes. Her death brought us together, but I was oblivious. He was my solace and my escape, but he was the cause of all my pain.

He and she.

Dominant and submissive turned Dominant and Dominant.

Together, their dominance over my life… is the reason I no longer have a mom.

Taylor's back.

"Miss Steele," he says urgently. "I am so sorry… you will never know how sorry I am to do this… but I need you to tell me _exactly_ what Elena said on that call. Your feelings for Mr Grey… they are _the_ most understandable thing in the world. They are your right, your absolute right. But she _will_ harm him to save herself. You know that… you know what she is, the kind of things she is capable of. If she thinks that it's a choice between him and her, Mr Grey… he doesn't come off well in that scenario. You want justice for your mother, of course you do. You want vengeance, of course you do. But you know… deep down inside of you… that Mr Grey is a troubled, broken and disturbed man… but he is a _good_ man. Underneath it all, he has a good heart and a giving soul."

He takes a huge breath, his chest straining in his custom white shirt.

"Please help me to bring him home. What happens after that, that's up to you. I will stand by you. I will do whatever it takes to ensure that whatever you need to bring yourself some semblance of peace, is achieved. I give you my word. But for now, please, I need your help…"

He kneels down in front of me and clasps my right hand in his left.

"I need you to recount that conversation, word for word, as best you can."

I eye him for a moment, my brain swimming in a brine of most agonizing pain. If I do nothing, I know in my heart and soul that Elena will… divest herself of Christian in a way that best ensures her continued freedom. Contrary to his belief and the subject of many of our blazing rows, Elena Lincoln does not feel compassion, empathy or love. All she cares about is control. Control and survival. She will kill Christian… that isn't the question. The question is… do I give a damn if she does?

Taylor's grasp gently tightens around my palm.

"Please, Miss Steele? If not for him… for me?"

My eyes swivel to his and my mouth slips open of its own accord. The conversation is seared into my brain, my consciousness is hypervigilant in this hell that surrounds me. His eyes widen and his skin whitens as I recount Elena's cold ultimatum. By the time I'm finished and my mouth sews itself back up, he is on his feet and he is barking orders down the phone at… Sawyer? Barney? Who knows…

Who cares.

He ends the call and takes a deep steadying breath. Turning to me once more, he's back on bended knee and the conflict in his eyes somehow manages to pull on my heartstrings. My cell is in his hand and his teeth grit together in a painful looking mask of indecision. Wiping a hand across his brow, he steadies himself and licks his lips slowly.

"Ana? I have to ask something of you… something that isn't fair, isn't right…"

My heart begins to pound.

"Elena will not respond to me. She will not respond to anyone but you. She has despised yours and Mr Grey's relationship from day one. A lot of that now makes more sense than it did before, she was petrified his growing feelings for you would lead him to confess about that night. But it was also more than that, it was jealousy. She has always coveted Mr Grey as her own, and you were a threat to that. Him being under her control now, it'll be getting her off, despite the seriousness of the situation. The fact that she now has him, after all this time, and you do not… it'll give her a sense of satisfaction that only one as depraved as she could possibly experience. If I call or involve the police, I know in my gut that she will follow through on her threat and… harm him. It has to be you. As despicably unfair and as cruel as that is, it has to be you. If Mr Grey is to get out of wherever he is intact and alive… it has to be by your hand."

He swallows and extends my cell in clear and unequivocal question.

"Will you make the call, Ana? Will you save him?"

It's a red pill or blue pill situation. Red pill, I send Taylor on his way and never look back. Not my problem, not my monkey. I tell him to do whatever he has to do or wants to do. But to leave me the hell out of it. To never darken my doorstep with the depravity of his Master's sickness, ever again. Blue pill, I take the cell. I make the call. I barter the deal, I ensure his safe release and let the pieces fall where they may, thinking no further ahead than to bring about the release of the man who flew me to the moon and let me fall with a crashing force back to Earth.

 _Red pill, blue pill, red pill, blue pill, red pill, blue pill…_

I swallow.

I swallow hard.

I swallow harder than hard and I take the fucking blue pill.

….

A/N: If you'd like a sneak peek of the next chapter, just leave a "sneak peek please" in a review and I'll PM you shortly.

Today's recommendation is A Birdie in the Clubhouse by mattlukejess. It's brand spanking new and is already shaping up to a proper page turner!

Till next time!

Inks x

….


	12. Chapter 12

Blood congeals around my eyes. One rib is definitely cracked, maybe two. Blinking makes my head spin, so I stop, slowly trying to gauge my surroundings. Trussed up with sharp cable ties, I am lying on a dusty wooden floor. There are no windows in this room, the only light provided comes from a flickering naked bulb that hangs down low from a filthy chord in the middle of the room.

Elena looks calmly down at my stirring.

Her lips curl up cruelly and there's a deadened look behind her sharp eyes that I haven't seen for a long, long time. Panic automatically sets in. I fight viciously to hide it. She'll feed on it, grow even more deadly on it. I cannot remember how I got here... I don't know what she's going to-

Her phone rings and she takes her eyes off me for just a moment to glance at the caller ID. Her eyes glow with glee. My stomach lurches painfully, my broken rib or ribs shuddering under the onslaught. She answers and my furious, anguished yell dies a death behind the filthy rag in my mouth.

Moving more directly into my eye line, she places a sharp, blood red high heel gently upon my rib cage in warning, before speaking in a voice that sends shivers erupting up and down my spine.

"Hello, Ana, dear. I knew you'd come to your senses and call back."

There's an explosion erupting inside of me. My worst nightmare is being played in HD clarify in front of my very eyes, and I can't wake up. The only other person in the world that knows Elena's deepest, darkest secret is Anastasia. Therefore, in her depraved mind, Ana has to go away. I've known deep down for the longest time that Elena was capable of unspeakable, terrible things. Things I couldn't even dream of. Her complete lack of remorse for Carla's death all this years is just one of the reasons I know she will do anything to protect herself.

Absolutely anything.

"Yes," Elena purrs, pressing down with her devils heel on my chest, stopping my writhing struggles in a nanosecond as the pain shatters my tenuous grip on reality. I see white as she grins cheerfully down at me. "You were right to rethink, dear. Now, before we can discuss this matter any further, I need to ask you a question and I feel it's only fair to lay all our cards on the table, don't you? Of course you do. So, I'm going to ask you a very serious question and how this whole situation plays out depends on your answer. Bear in mind that I will know instantly if you're lying and well... I'm sure you can appreciate that that wouldn't be good for dear old Christian, right?"

I'm choking on my own agony as Elena's toad like grin widens at Ana's unheard answer.

"Good, very good. So, my question is this... have you at any point, prior to this conversation or our last, been in any contact with the police, in any shape or form?"

Screaming behind the disgusting gag, I am utterly fucking useless. Ana's answer must be no, because the crimson cruel lips stretch tightly over cosmetically whitened teeth. I can't breathe. My lungs are stretching, ballooning inside of me. Writhing on this filthy floor, I know that whatever I've done to date, whatever sickeningly twisted and selfish shit I've pulled with Ana to date, it has nothing on this. I've pulled her into Elena's web and she's no match for her. Ana... undeniably strong, yes, but so pure she is not score for the sickness that I know makes up Elena's DNA.

"That was a wise move, Anastasia. You're making all the right decisions you need to be making if you want to keep Christian alive. Now, I'm an older woman as you might have guessed and I think I might prefer to do things face to face instead of over the phone. I think this... unpleasantness can be settled out amicably over a nice glass of red and the intelligence of worldly adults, yes?"

She's purring.

She's at her most dangerous when she's purring, like a leopard that claims to be the first to have changed their spots. I roar pointlessly behind my filthy gag, choking on my own vocals as the heel of her shoe threatens to pierce my skin and fully crumble my already crumpled bones. Thoughts of Ana being within arms reach of the animal above me turns my inside into liquid pools of red, hot terror. But there's nothing I can do... nothing.

"I'm glad you see it the same way," she breathes. "I don't want any harm to come to him either and yes, of course, you have my word that he is completely unharmed."

She laughs a tinkling laugh that feels like shrapnel lacerating my eardrums.

"This isn't some kind of villain movie, dear, I am a most reasonable woman when you get to know me, truly. There is no real harm going to come to Christian for harms sake. As long as you do exactly what you're told, you'll be back in his arms, loves young dream etcetera, etcetera. We're actually just having a drink, he and I, reminiscing about times gone by. Now, I'm going to give you the address that you're going to come to, alone. That is non-negotiable. I have my fingers in many pies, dear, and I will know if the police have been notified. I am also painfully familiar with Christian's bumbling security team. I see Jason Taylor within a dogs breath of this place and it's game over. Seattle's most handsome man will be no more. Is that clear?"

Ana's answer must be yes and my latest scream dies in my throat.

"Good girl. I knew you were a clever one. Now, the address is 1329 South Western, across from the abandoned shopping mall with the orange construction scaffolding out front. It's very secluded and no one will disturb us. I hope you bear that in mind when choosing to honor your promises that we talked about. You have ninety minutes to be here. Looking forward to it so very much, dear. Bye for now."

She hangs up briskly and mercifully removes her garish high heel from my chest.

Oxygen explodes into my beleaguered lungs and I'm seeing stars. There's a scraping sound as Elena disappears from my eye line and slowly inches back into frame, pulling some disused wine crate behind her. Settling down on it, she crosses her legs and swings her right foot backwards and forwards across my face. I strain against my bonds, a sudden surge of adrenaline kicking in that numbs the pain, but she just laughs softly and runs her manicured fingers through her hair.

"What a man will do for the woman he loves," she croons. "You're bleeding internally, Christian. You probably can't feel that, but you'll begin to feel tired very soon. I'm sure you can feel that two or three of your ribs are cracked so, if I were you, I'd perhaps stop struggling Incase one of them punctures your lung, robbing you of your chance to see sweet Ana one last time."

She arches a brow down at me.

"I was going to let sleeping dogs for a while and see what she would do. But she's too angry, much too angry. She's a liability, Christian. Same as you. I think you know me well enough to know that my need for control just cannot tolerate liabilities. It's a shame, really, but my daddy always said that hard choices make hard men, or in this came, women. It'll be quick and painless, I assure you. I bear you enough residual love to give you that much. The men who brought you to me will be respectful. It'll be... as decent as it can be, in the circumstances."

Her head shakes at my continued, futile attempts to free myself.

"Why did you have to do it, Christian? Why did you have to go and fall in love with that stupid little girl and expose us both like this? I taught you how to survive in this world, I taught you that love was for fools and look how right I was. Look what your love has bought you? You and your sweetheart? That woman's death was a fucking accident. It could have happened to anyone. The girl had moved on, she wasn't cutting her wrists or dealing drugs. She was as successful and mindlessly happy as someone like her could be. So, why did you have to go and do it? You fucking idiot, why did you make it like this? Me, like this? You could have been so good with Autumn. With her on your arm, you could have been the master of your own universe... and you blew it all, ruined everything, for the sad semi-orphan that is Anastasia goddamned Steele?"

She leans down unexpectedly and rips the gag from my mouth.

"This may be our last chance to speak," she whisper. "So speak."

I want to scream, to yell until what's left of my lungs cave in. To free myself of my bonds and smash her head into this filthy floor until it's nothing but a matted lump of blood-blonde straw. But instinct slowly seeps over me like a protective blanket. I know Elena Lincoln. I know her as deeply as anyone can know anyone. I've been infected with the disease of her being for so many years that I am embedded with her owners manual. Her Elena-101 guide to Lincoln psych-ville. Force isn't going to get Anastasia to safety.

Intelligence is.

Cunning is.

Fucking survival skills will.

For this to work, it has to be the performance of a lifetime. I have to act as if my life and Anastasia's depended on it, which should be easy, since they do. I'm beginning to feel very cold and fatigue threatens to take hold. I fight them off, fight to stay in the moment.

Fight for Anastasia.

"Elena, thank fuck, I thought you'd never take that gag out. I thought you'd do all this before I could tell you what I needed to tell you, what I've wanted to tell you for the longest time now."

My voice is soft and smooth, confident and calm.

My CEO voice.

"I always knew, deep down inside, that you were the one driving that night. Elena, how could I not? Think about it. I've had years to replay that night over and over in my head, night after night lying in bed and going through that car ride, frame by frame. But I buried it, I suppressed it. I couldn't bring myself to think that you, the person I trusted most in the world, would do something like that to me. But I was younger then, naive and immature. I know now that you did the right thing, I can accept it. I don't have to like it, but I can deal with it."

She's silent, mercifully fucking silent.

"Anastasia was a crutch to me. She was a way of making me feel better about what I thought I did. I'm convinced myself that I loved her, that I was capable of such an idiocy as love. It was an illusion I created for myself, Elena, to get me through the aftermath of that night. You know I don't care about Autumn, but what you don't know is, equally, I don't care about her. About Anastasia. Because I'm just like you... I'm not built that way. My brain doesn't... can't, understand or reciprocate love. It was all just an illusion, a coping mechanism."

She's staring intently now, studying me with surgical scrutiny.

"She has fuck all proof that can contradict the police's version of that night. It's an age old RTA that nobody cares about. You saw the way the police responded to me in that station, they think I'm a nutter. Because that's what I wanted them to think, that was the groundwork I wanted to lay. All this looks like to them is a bitter dispute between two ex-lovers with a healthy dose of mental instability for good measure. You think they're going to want in on that? That case is low profile, years old and closed. No cop is going to touch it with a barge pole."

Time is ticking and sweat is dripping down my bruised spine.

I sense the moment and move in for the kill, curving my lips into a smirk.

"I wanted out of the Autumn hellhole I was in. I wanted out of the Anastasia hellhole I was in. I wanted my freedom, mentally and otherwise, Elena. That's what all this has been about. It's you and me, it's always been you and me. You know that. You're the one who saved me all those years ago and now... well, now it's my turn to save you."

I jerk my head down towards the cable ties that bite into my skin.

"We don't need her, Elena. We don't need Anastasia. All we need is each other, like it's always been. Untie me and we can deal with this with no bloodshed, no threat of hard jail time. It can go back to how it always was and was always meant to be, you and me. Anything Anastasia says, to anyone, can be countered. You know money solves all problems and with our combined weight and reputation, we're untouchable. You know that."

Her mouth falls slightly ajar. I always was a skilled actor.

I flash her the adoring smile that used to cross my fifteen-year-old face.

It's time.

"Elena... please. It's you. You know it's always been you. Untie me and I'll show you that it's you. Your men are outside that door, right? No harm can possibly come to you, not that I'd ever harm you. I was out of order before, at your house. I'm sorry for that. I was reacting to my own shit, my own realization that I'd buried the truth for so many years. I should never have spoken to you that way... not after everything you've done for me."

I shoot her the lopsided grin I know she once loved and feel burning nausea lick my innards.

"You've always known how to deal with my temper."

She licks her lips. I'm reeling her in, I can feel it.

"So, why don't we kill two birds with one stone. You untie me and I can prove and reassert my loyalty to you, above all others, by offering you my submission. Just like old times. You're a void in my life, Elena, and I've been spiraling. You know that. I don't need or want Anastasia or Autumn. We can deal with them out in the open, where we have the upper hand. Untie me... and we can sort this out, right here and right now. Just you and me. You need to regain control to feel secure and I need to let it go... so, please... let's leave here, forget everyone but us and give each other what we need. What we've both needed for the longest fucking time."

It's time.

I lower my gaze submissively to the floor and adopt a tone I'd long since escaped.

She responds without being able to control herself, as I'd prayed for.

"Who do you belong to?"

I keep my eyes trained on the grimy ground so she wont see the burning disgust that burns within me. She's moving closer to me and I prepare myself, like a snake ready to spring whilst all the while battling to maintain the cover that makes me want to gag. Anastasia's beautiful face burns in my mind as I mouth the words of my adolescence and hope to fuck it works.

"You," I murmur softly, "and only you."

...

Later update than planned and I wrote this on the train with no time to proof read so please forgive typos as I wanted to get this up when I had the chance.


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